During the past years a lot of research has be done on measuring and analyzing the stated and revealed preferences of house buyers, in order to develop so called new product market combinations for the housing market. It has become clear from these studies that the choice of a house buyer for a certain type of dwelling is based on both quantitative and qualitative criteria, derived from the quantitative and qualitative attributes he observes and perceives when confronted with the choice for a dwelling. A dwelling as such, can be regarded as a complex ëproductí, consisting of a varied amount of quantita-tive and qualitative attributes. A dwelling not only offers a place to eat, sleep and live, but also a place of comfort and safety. For a growing group of house buyers their dwelling seems to become more and more even like ëa statement of life style_, in the same way a dwelling was regarded as ëa statement of richnessí in the earlier days. The focus of researchers is gradually moving towards the qualitative criteria that determine the choice behaviour of house buyers. Or, more specifically, towards the relationships between the preferences, perceptions, emotions and beliefs of the house buyer and the quantitative and qualitative criteria he has in mind. And, secondly, they want to understand how these aspects are related to the actual choice for a dwelling. An intriguing question is how these preferences, perceptions, emotions and beliefs (i.e. psychological factors) can be measured and analyzed in such a way that they can be described and communicated unambiguously to different parties that are involved in the housing market. The aim of this conceptual paper is to make a start with the exploration of the expected added value of Conjoint Analysis and Rule Developing Experiment as tools for measuring and analyzing the combi-nation of quantitative and qualitative criteria that direct the choice behaviour of house buyers. Conjoint Analysis, which has originally been developed for marketing applications, analyzes the joint subjective and psychological factors that influence the choice behavior of consumers. Applying Con-joint Analysis as a method of research, will not only add to the measurement and analysis of stated and revealed preferences of house buyers. It may be also of help to develop knowledge on unstated and even innovative preferences, which will eventually lead to innovative, yet unknown dwelling concepts and dwelling market combinations. These unknown combinations might be found by adding the method of Rule Developing Experiment. This paper is part of a proposed dissertation.

Urban development in general and the housing market in Eastern Germany in particular have experienced unprecedented changes since the reunification of the two German states in 1990: Significant structural economic and demographic shifts led to a downturn of the entire urban development process in many towns and cities. Initially, historical housing stock in the inner city centres suffered most from high vacancy rates. As a kind of second wave of these developments, suburban and large industrial housing estates were affected by the consequences of widespread economic and employment problems and a subsequent population decline due to migration and lower birth rates. In addition, the close-down of essential public infrastructure and other public services became inevitable in many places and contributed to the tense situation (BMVBW, 2000). The City of Erfurt, federal capital of Thuringia, has also been challenged by these developments and their spatial implications in various ways (Allin, 2001). In 1999, for example, the mean vacancy rate in all large housing estates in Erfurt was at 14.5% and ñ without further action taken ñ projected to rise up to 44% in 2020. So far, a number of strategic policies have been set up in order to address the problem. Due to comprehensive measures of demolition targeted at unneeded housing stock within the urban area, vacancy rates in the nine urban districts with large housing estates have dropped significantly to 8% in 2005 (Werkstatt Stadt, 2011). Over the last couple of years, the city also managed to stabilise its demographic and economic development. This success is partly due to Erfurtís particular situation being the capital of the federal state and, thus, covering a number of central services and important administrative functions, which helped to sustain the local economy (Erfurt, 2011). More than 20 years after the reunification of Germany, a closer look at how the City of Erfurt has changed its approaches and tactics in terms of coping with city shrinkage and a declining housing market reveals a variety of interesting aspects. Erfurt is still confronted with the consequences of an on-going population decline and, accordingly, the need for re-adjusting local strategies in a very flexible and responsive manner. Further changes as well as more or less insecure and instable urban development conditions have to be anticipated as major trends in the wider city-region. The present paper aims at challenging the existing portfolio of housing market strategies and urban redevelopment policies in the City of Erfurt and, in particular, focuses on an in-depth investigation of the overall suitability, prioritisation and integration of specific objectives and measures targeted to provide a sound basis for sustainable urban development and (re-)balancing the city-wide housing market in Erfurt in the longer term.

The objective of this paper is the presentation of a methodology for calculating and evaluating the empiric probability function of the market value for a defined property. As it is commonly known 'The value of an object is not unique' (Roca, 1986), but is defined by its distribution function. Design/methodology/approach ñ The tools necessary to develop this project were: the expert methods theory, accurate information in the area of construction techniques, statistical resampling methods, spatial correlation and regression methods, the study of the empirical distribution functions and the statistics which define the distribution functions, GIS tools, the hedonic functions, simulation methods, discriminant methods and the studies of legal procedures related to the valuation studies process. Findings - Thanks to nowadays computation methods it has been possible to achieve a representation of the market value of a property by taking into consideration the information on the set of samples. The empirical distribution is not only the image of the behavior of the value; it is an indicator of the quality and the effectiveness of the solution and an indicator of the complexity of the evaluated zone. Based on this concept, it is possible to decide based on the statistical definition of the distribution curve, how and where the solution obtained could be employed. The statistical method of analysis of spatial correlation can be of great utility in the property valuation world, but a previous technical procedure is necessary to guarantee the quality of data. Practical implications - The hybrid AVM presented in this paper can be a tool of enormous help, not only for the valuation entities in their individual valuation procedures, but also for institutions that aim to perform mass valuations. Originality /value - It is a high quality solution that can provide substantial assistance to those officials responsible for conducting the mass valuation processes required by BASEL II and III. It can also be employed as an auditing tool for legal frameworks like BASEL II and III and also for the everyday valuation processes performed within a company when the results of the valuation arise from different providers.

A survey is conducted to record the level and structure of expectations of return and risk in the Swiss property market. The main interest of the study is to uncover the relationship between expected return and expected risk for various geographical regions and property sub-markets as well as to understand the investment target of institutional investors. Research in the equity market (Shefrin 2001) indicates that investors do not always invest according to the CAPM but succumb to the affect heuristic, using for investment a negative relation between risk and return. The aim of the study is to understand if the short term dynamic is similar in the property market and if is to what extent.

The purpose of this study is to identify the determination variables which affect the retail property prices in Seoul by examining the variables related to the economic conditions of retail trade areas, physical characteristics of buildings, and location. About 146 major retail property data from 1 December 2007 to 31 December 2007 were analysed. Regression analysis and a structural equation modelling (SEM) were constructed to test the significance of the variables on the retail property prices in Seoul. The results indicate that age of building, size of shop and location explain a significant portion of the variability of the retail property prices. Through the empirical analysis, it was concluded that the retail property prices in Seoul were affected by the economic conditions, physical characteristics, and location.

The purpose of this study is to apply different methods including statistical and spatial analysis techniques to delineate spatial submarkets of housing prices and to examine spatial dependence of housing prices. The data comes from housing transaction prices in the central development areas of greater Tainan City, 2009. Greater Tainan city is a new metropolis amalgamated from former Tainan city and Tainan county. Due to the amalgamation of municipalities, the local government boundaries should be adjusted, and in the mean time, it is worthy to identify spatial submarkets of housing prices in greater Tainan City, compared to former political boundary submarkets. It was found that spatial submarkets of housing prices classified by cluster analysis and spatial techniques are similar. Higher housing prices are concentrated in the core of central development areas while lower prices spread widely around outer ring of the central development areas in greater Tainan city. In testing spatial autocorrelation of housing prices, it was found that it exists significant spatial dependence between housing prices. In modeling housing prices, the results show that spatial submarkets derived by spatial autocorrelation techniques have stronger and higher impacts on housing prices, and the model also have better goodness-of-fit compared to other two types of models.

Industrial facilities (manufacturing facilities, warehouses, logistics centers, etc.) constitute a significant proportion of the overall real estate assets in Western countries. However, mainstream of the previous corporate real estate management research (CREM) has focused mainly on knowledge intensive branches and office use while there has been only a few studies about CREM in industrial facilities. The main objective of this research is to recognize the added value elements of corporate real estate management in industrial companies. The study is implemented with a constructive research method and it applies a normative case method implemented with three case studies and web based surveys for a larger sample. Based on the empirical research nine value adding attributes of CREM in industrial premises are recognized. Of these the most effective attributes to create added value are to promote employee safety and health, improve employee satisfaction, cost control, reduce environmental impacts and enhance productivity.

In an asset allocation process, correlations are particularly important if one includes 'alternative investments' such as real estate, commodities and hedge funds, which have been proclaimed to provide diversifying benefits within the overall portfolio context. However, by looking at correlations between asset classes alone some diversification benefits may be over or under-stated. More recently, finance literature has focused on alternative asset classes to study their behaviour and to identify the main driving factors. Particularly, these studies have tried to shed light upon the cyclical behaviour of these ënewí assets and their link with overall economic trends. This paper represents the first comparative study of several asset classes. We analyse the common driving factors of fourteen (both traditional and alternative) assets to provide insights into their likely performance over different economic environments. Firstly, Principle Component Analysis is used to give a better statistical understanding of the structure of the data and the number of likely common factors. Subsequently, a number of different univariate and multivariate regressions are performed using financial and economic variables identified in the literature. We find evidence of common macroeconomic and financial factors driving the returns of certain asset classes, with consequences on the reduced diversification benefits of such assets during particular phases of the business cycle.

Urban renewal is usually hard to be arranged because of the high costs of integrating landowners. Local governments were often approved additional building bulk (ABB) as a key incentive for encouraging implementers to arrange urban renewal projects. It is thought that the more ABB are given, the more activeness the implementers will be. At the same time, urban renewal projects would be accelerated because of the extra floor areas arisen by ABB. However, ABB was criticized for its increasing public good burdens and leads to bad urban development. It is important to clarify the effects of approving ABB so as to evaluate the role that ABB plays in proceeding urban renewal. In this study, ABB is tried to be examined with the period between the urban renewal outline schemes were approved and the urban renewal plans were applied to local authorities in Taipei City. Besides, whether urban renewal implementers are benefited by ABB will also be checked so as to analyze the relationships between ABB and implementers.

In Australia one of the most important factors contributing to housing demand is the growth in the number of households and lone person and single parent households are the two households projected to grow fastest. Both households are significantly over represented by female headship. At the same time women are being associated with longer life spans, higher levels of workforce participation, higher rates of pay and increasing levels of wealth accumulation. Thus there is the expectation that significantly more women will be looking to purchase homes on their own and that this will be an important determinant of their ability to secure adequate living standards in old age. Yet there has been little research on female home ownership in Australia. This paper presents a preliminary analysis of female first home buyers in Australia for two time periods, 1998 and 2008 using national survey data collected by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). Key characteristics and changes over time are identified as a first step in identifying the propensity to purchase by female headed households.

The aim of this paper is to test an indicator that can represent the process of decline of a specific type of urban area: the industrial estate. We use data on decline derived from fieldwork on industrial estates in the Netherlands to test whether the development of property values on these industrial estates is a reliable indicator to measure decline. The identification of a reliable indicator enables the systematic analysis of processes of decline of industrial estates, which has received little attention in the vast body of literature on urban decline. This paper comprises two parts. In the first part, a connection between urban decline literature with literature on the valuation of individual property is made. Urban decline at the level of individual urban areas, often referred to as neighbourhood decline or decay (Cheshire and Hay 1989) is much researched in urban literature. However, apart from inner city commercial areas, mostly residential neighbourhoods have been the topic of research in studies of urban area decline (see e.g. Broadway and Jesty (1998) and Medhurst and Lewis (1969)). Other parts of the city appear to be mostly neglected. Rather than adding to the already extensive literature on urban decline, the state of art on this literature is presented. Literature on the valuation of property is added to identify an indicator for decline of industrial estates. The second, empirical part of this paper, focuses on fieldwork that was conducted in the Netherlands. A study of the present quality of more than 600 industrial estates in the South of the Netherlands will be compared to the development of property values on the same industrial estates. By bringing this together the hypothesis whether the development of average property values could serve as an indicator for decline of industrial estates, is tested. A proper indicator for decline of industrial estates is expected to be useful in at least two ways. First, this indicator will enable further analysis, seeking to explain why the decline of industrial estates (or other urban areas) takes place. Second, the majority of governmental redevelopment schemes (in the Netherlands and elsewhere) are aimed at the level of the urban area. More knowledge on the actual causes of urban area decline will help the responsible government organisations to better target revitalisation subsidies to obsolete urban areas in general and industrial estates in specific. This paper is organised as follows. In section 2, obsolescence of urban areas will be defined and by studying property valuation literature, the factors that cause decline of industrial estates will be presented. This will lead to the conclusion that development of the average property value in a certain urban area can be an indicator for decline of that area. In section 3 the empirical work will be presented. The present quality of the sample of industrial estates will be compared to the development of average property value. Section 4 draws the main conclusions and discusses their implications.

Previous research has focused on the link between returns in the REIT industry, the stock market and the housing market. However, none, so far, have examined the possibility of bubble spillovers from either of the markets to the securitised real estate market. In this paper, we test for the presence of periodically collapsing bubbles in the three markets using a regime switching approach. Significant evidence of this class of bubbles exists in the three markets. Using a Granger causality test, we discover that bubbles spillover from the unsecuritised real estate market to the REIT market, only. Further analyses show that over eight quarters, over 9.5% of the variation in the REIT market bubble is caused by shocks to the housing market bubble compared to the stock market bubble which contributes to only 1.1% of changes. Given these findings, we proceed to compare REIT trading rules that rely on signals from the forecasted probabilities of a crash occurring in the unsecuritised real estate market to other strategies. Between 2000 and 2009, this trading rule outperforms the traditional buy-and-hold strategy.

Securitized real estate shares constitute an important investment vehicle for institutional investors and households. Investors both hold real estate shares directly or indirectly through for instance real estate mutual funds as well as real estate ETFs. Therefore it is interesting to study the inter-relationship between listed property share indexes and other major stock and bond market sector indexes. We apply different econometrics methods and models on daily data from the Stockholm Stock Exchange, to study the interaction between daily return figures for listed real estate share index series, and other major stock and bond market sector indexes. We find evidence that some stock and bond market sector indexes are especially inter-related with the real estate stock market index.

The purpose of this paper is to create the premises for a system of competencies in Romania coherent with the European regulations at master level in the area of economic analysis and valuation of businesses, real estates and financial assets, according to the requirements of professional associations. The master programs organized by universities should be based on a system of competencies adapted to the requirements of business environment and professional associations, considering the Romanian and European institutional frameworks and the demands of the European labour market. A key element is to adapt the curricula of master studies to generate knowledge and skills in correlation with the undergraduate and doctoral education level. Itís also essential to implement the competencies in teaching and assessment of students to create the support to growth the learning opportunities. The paper focuses especially on the competencies system for master programs from field of economic analysis and valuation of business, real estate and financial assets in connection with the requirements of professional associations which is essential for the correct implementation of university graduates in the market of professional valuators. Curricula should provide to graduates of master programs the professional skills mentioned in the occupational standards, in accordance with the methodologies developed by national and international standards.

This paper investigates the alignment between Corporate Real Estate (CRE) and organisational strategy that is thought to be important for CRE to deliver value to the organisation. The CRE literature has a number of models but as evidence from practice indicates that these are not being used this suggests that how alignment occurs may not be completely clear. Furthermore, there is anecdotal evidence that simplistic, deterministic drivers of alignment are sought for, though the complex, multi-dimensional nature of CRE and its management suggests a more comprehensive understanding of the basis of alignment is necessary. Design/Methodology/approach: As a basis for an empirical investigation, this paper, after investigating ten existing alignment models, sets out five possible theoretical approaches that could apply to CRE alignment ñ deterministic, algorithmic, heuristics, wicked problems and game theory. The empirical study investigates those approachesí applicability in practice. Findings: A framework of fifteen possible components to existing alignment models are identified which are variously and incompletely deployed in those models. The empirical studyís early results show evidence of the five approaches with game theory most evident. Implications for research: The frameworks introduced here suggest a more comprehensive basis for alignment offering some ways forward in addressing the fragmented theory of CRE alignment. Future lines of enquiry are evident that can take place using an expanded theorisation of CRE strategic alignment. Implications for practice: As practice imperfectly deploys existing alignment models it is thought that a more comprehensive framework to alignment would be benefit practice as it seeks to deliver and demonstrate the delivery of value to the organisation through aligning CRE and organizational strategy.

Since primitive times of construction, building costs and their compliance are essential for building owners and investors. But the daily press is reporting regularly about construction projects, which suffer from building cost escalations. Often it is actually spoken about building cost explosions. Realising that, you can have the feeling that an accurate building cost estimation is a very tough challenge for the people, involved in the construction business. Are cost escalations a natural law, which has to be accepted? In contradiction to that, there is the keen wish of the private, as well as the public building owners to have building cost accuracy. Building costs, which are predicted in an early project stage of a construction project are fundamental for the investment decision to realise a construction project or not. Furthermore, these predicted costs are within the cost control the basis for more project accompanying cost relevant decisions. It is essential for the building owner to keep the costs within the budget. This can judge about success or failure of the investment.

The aim of this study is to examine whether securitized real estate returns reflect direct real estate returns or general stock market returns. In contrast to previous research, which has generally relied on overall real estate market indices and neglected the potential long-term dynamics, our econometric evaluation is based on sector level data for the U.S and aims to cater for both the short-term and long-term dynamics of the assets. The use of sector level data is likely to yield more accurate results regarding the linkages between direct and securitized real estate. In addition to the real estate and stock market indices, the analysis includes a number of fundamental variables that are expected to influence real estate and stock returns significantly. We estimate vector error-correction models and investigate the forecast error variance decompositions and impulse responses of the assets. Both the variance decompositions and impulse responses suggest that the long-run REIT market performance is much more closely related to the direct real estate market than to the general stock market. Consequently, REITs and direct real estate should be relatively good substitutes in a long-horizon investment portfolio.

We examine the wealth effects of fifty-six Australian Real Estate Investment Trusts (A-REITs) acquirers around the announcement date of a merger and acquisition over the period of 1996 to 2010. Utilising event study methodology we find that bidding A-REITs earn positive and significant cumulative excess returns (CARs) of +0.966% around the three-day announcement period [-1,+1]. Analysis also indicates bidding firms earn higher CARs when the acquisition is financed by scrip and/or a combination of scrip and cash. Consistent with prior REIT research, event study results show that A-REIT acquirers earn higher excess returns when the target is private as compared to a public target, +2.834% and +0.457% respectively. Further investigation, employing regression analysis, shows book-to-market ratio has a negative impact on bidding firms CARs, suggesting low (high) book-to-market ratio firms are overvalued (undervalued). We also find that specialisation by property type has a positive and significant influence on bidder excess returns. Finally, our results show support for the method of payment findings in the event study, with method of payment returning a negative and significant impact on bidder CARs.

This paper investigates the evolution of the multitude of alternative building certification/ assessment rating systems around the world. In addition, the paper compares best practices, with a particular focus on the two most commonly used and/or modified environmental assessment systems ñ LEED (Leadership in Environmental and Energy Design) and BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method). In order for these certification/assessment rating systems to continue to push for innovation, it will be important that they begin to converge and speak the same language, so this paper will explore the different philosophies and business models from which they have evolved. Similarities will be identified, topics of significant difference will be highlighted, and strengths and weaknesses of each system currently being applied will be described. Issues that remain to be tackled by the rating systems ñ e.g. such as a need to move beyond checklists to better performance indicators that measure performance more holistically ñ are identified for further research.

Buildings fundamental goal is to deliver safe shelter and good indoor climate for the occupants. Creating the thermal comfort begins with modelling, which is based on mathematical descriptions of the designing building, its surroundings, and regional clim

The purpose of this paper is to develop a quantitative appraisal model for assessing the inclusiveness of built facilities in higher education institutions. The Building Inclusiveness Assessment Score, or the BIAS, developed is used to assess the inclusiveness of the built facilities in the Hong Kong University. Design/methodology/approach ñ In this study, a comprehensive review of relevant guides and manuals in Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore, the US and the UK is conducted. Two Multiple-criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) techniques, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and the Non-structural Fuzzy Decision Support System (NSFDSS), are studied and compared and the latter is applied to analyse the weightings of inclusion attributes. On-site appraisals of 28 buildings in the Main Campus of the Hong Kong University are carried out and shortcomings resulting in exclusion are identified. Findings ñ Using the BIAS, the common areas of the built facilities in the Hong Kong University are appraised. As suggested by the preliminary result, the built facilities are not fully inclusive and there are ample rooms to improve their inclusiveness. Areas that require immediate attention are those related to the access and the safety of persons with disabilities (PWDs). Originality/value ñ Access audit and access appraisal are the methods adopted to appraise the inclusiveness of built facilities nowadays. This research seeks to obviate their shortcomings by minimising the subjective judgements of the assessors in the BIAS proposed. Compare with earlier studies in the subject, more quantitative elements are incorporated into the BIAS and its assessment procedures are detailed.

Given the large increase in Swedish house prices and households_ indebtedness since the 1990s, it is important to study the seemingly strong relationship between house prices and bank lending. Credit expansion may increase house prices and higher house prices increases the wealth and, thereby, the bank lending. A better understanding of the interrelationship between bank lending and house prices is important on a macro level, e.g., as it influences policy decisions geared towards both the housing and the banking markets. However, it is also important on a micro level. For instance, it may have an impact on credit rating, property valuation and decisions regarding allocating bank funds to households vis-‡-vis firms as well as the bank_s risk exposure, in particular related to potential bubbles on the housing market, and the bank_s exposure to default risks on the housing credit market. Our aim here is to analyze this interaction by investigating the Granger causality in Sweden over the period 1993-2010. The plan is to estimate a structured vector autoregressive model and a vector error correction model and thereby investigate if changes in bank lending causes house prices to change and/or vice versa. If our results indicate that causality goes in both directions, credit expansion and increased bank lending stimulate the housing market at the same time as rising house prices induce more bank lending to the household sector. Hence, in that case mortgage restrictions may have an effect on the housing market with lower prices in the short run. Disequilibrium in the lending market and housing market may also have an effect on the house prices in the long run. This is something that is going to be investigated. There are few studies examining the relationship between house prices and bank lending over time and across regions. Our ambition is to fill this gap. Our results may be of particular interest in the light of the current policy debate in Sweden regarding how to tackle a sharp house price increase in urban areas (partly) due to historically low interest rates.

The history of confidence intervals is discussed together with the pedagogical predilection to a parametric view of the world. The weakness of these methods is that they are not related to any measurement of probability. The inappropriateness of such an outlook in the realm of real estate is illustrated with real world examples. A non-parametric vision is developed and the utility of the jackknife and bootstrap methods (Efron 1979) developed. Their similarity to Monte Carlo Simulation is demonstrated. The standard algorithm is derived and presented in both VBA code suitable for incorporation into Excel and in the C# language that is compatible with the .Net framework. An original recode that is an order of magnitude faster is also presented. Applications to confidence intervals for residential price indices and weighted multiple linear regression are demonstrated.

A key role in the acquisition of commercial property investments in the UK and elsewhere is provided by the investment agent, acting in the capacity of a broker, adviser and negotiator on behalf of buyers and investors. The most common fee basis sought by an introducing agent is on the basis of a percentage (typically 1%) of the agreed purchase price in the event of a successful acquisition. The study comprises the following: 1. A critical appraisal of the system by which investments are ëintroducedí to prospective buyers. 2. An identification of the characteristics of investment agency advisory models and structures and their impact on agent-principal relationships. 3. A consideration of the ethical issues associated with provision of investment advice and recommendations for purchase delivered by investment agents inside and outside of RICS Red Book Guidelines. //The research has the following objectives: 1. Investigate the advantages and disadvantages associated with the different forms of investment agency advice relating to commercial property acquisitions. 2. Determine whether any new developments in the industry have resulted in evolution and adaptation of the nature of investment agency advice provided. 3. Consider whether any improvements could be made to investment agency practice in relation to acquisitions

In this paper I apply the Log Periodic Power Law Model (LPPL) to identify bubbles in housing markets. The model overcomes the difficulties that conventional bubble tests face in finding accurate estimates for fundamental house prices. The LPPL Model identifies bubbles by describing the stochastic path of bubbles instead of trying to estimate some fundamental house prices. The model draws on the theory of self-organized systems and methods of statistical physics. I apply the LPPL Model to data on 19 metropolitan housing markets in the US over the last 24 years. My results indicate that the model can reliably identify housing bubbles at early stages. The turning point of a bubble, i.e. the crash, can be predicted with the model within a reasonable time span.

As Rypkema states: ëOf all the economic issues of historic preservation, none is subject to so many opinions based on so few facts as the impact on property value of being included in a historic district.í In response to this concern, this paper reports its survey of relevant core literature, the purpose of which is to inform a subsequent empirical study investigating in detail the impact of statutory listing on the value of affected residential property in the local government area of Fremantle in Western Australia. This paper concentrates on Australian authored sources with the international coverage reported in a separate paper (Armitage and Irons 2011, forthcoming) and draws principally upon more recent academic research and research conducted within Australia. The study finds that very few Australian studies exist in this field and whilst the review centres on academic research, given the paucity of domestic literature, the net has been widened to include several studies undertaken or commissioned by government. In addition, the paper indicates that attention is almost exclusively accorded to research relating to single-unit residential dwellings although some authoritative works were found to be focussed on listing impacts on multi-unit residential property and commercial property impacts are noted in context. The central studies addressing the issue of heritage listing pricing affects are detailed and their findings summarised. The examination highlights the methodologies employed, discusses key findings and concludes with a critique of the extant research. Whilst an extensive review has been undertaken, it is neither intended nor designed to be exhaustive but to target the core literature and provide access to the extensive bibliography of the parent study (Irons 2009) to inform those with a more detailed interest in the topic. The research is conducted under the extensive and diverse body of ëtreatment evaluation literatureí. This umbrella grouping finds wide application within a range of discipline areas which, broadly speaking, encompasses all works that focus on assessing the effect of an exposure or treatment on the outcome of interest (Fu, Dow & Liu 2007). Treatment evaluation research is typically employed when observations are not randomly assigned to treatment and control groups (Waldfogel 1999) ñ which is certainly the case when examining the effect of heritage status on property prices ñ as the primary criterion for listing is demonstrated heritage significance. Listing status provides, in essence, a ënatural experimentí in which the effect of the heritage listing can be compared for treatment (listed) and control (non-listed) groups.

Fragmentation of ownership in land, among others, has hindered the redevelopment of inner city of Taipei. It is believed that the sluggish land redevelopment is partly responsible for a high housing price and also continuing deterioration of old neighborhoods. In response to those problems, Taipei city government has over the years granted developers additional floor spaces to incentivize a faster redevelopment and more housing supply in designated areas where neighborhood deterioration is severe. We incorporate several sets of data so as to answer the question that if this policy works. The building activities such as project number and size between designated areas and others, before and after the major legislations are compared. We attempt to understand, through this kind of comparison, whether the provision of additional floor spaces, as a policy stimulant, have effectively amalgamated land parcels and consequently increased housing supply in those designated run-down areas.

The effects of overconfidence have been mainly investigated investorsí decisions regarding stock portfolios, and far less so the decisions of managers at corporations. The few exceptions that do investigate the effect of behavioral biases within a corporate setting include most notably the empirical studies by Malmendier and Tate (2005a, b, 2008), Malmendier, Tate, and Yan (2006), and Crane and Hartzell (2009). Malmendier and Tate (2005a) relate overconfidence to investmentñcash-flow sensitivity of CEOs and show that CEO overconfidence has a positive effect on investment, which is measured using firm capital expenditures. Crane and Hartzell (2008) investigate a different behavioral aspect, the disposition effect, using a REIT sample. REITs offer an ideal setting to investigate professional managersí investment decisions. Investment and divestment decisions can easily be identified since REITs mainly purchase and sell buildings, so most of the investment decisions can be followed by the researcher. Additionally, REIT asset values are transparent, making it possible to observe how much a firm spent when investing in a project. We investigate the effect of CEO overconfidence on trading activity using REITs. Using a REIT sample gives us the opportunity to identify each investment decision and observe how frequently REIT managers trade and to relate trading activity to overconfidence, and do that separately using purchases and sales. We define a CEO as overconfident if he buys more of his own company stock than he sells throughout the whole sample period, following Malmendier and Tate (2005a). We find that overconfident CEOs significantly purchase more properties than non-overconfident counterparts. Between 6% and 13%, we also document that overconfident CEOs are significantly more likely to hold properties than their non-overconfident counterparts. A CEO being a net buyer of his own companyís stock might either indicate overconfidence or access to private information. However, with private information, we expect managers to perform better, while overconfident CEOs trade non-optimally so must have worse performance. We evidence that they have worse operating performance than their non-overconfident counterparts. To separate overconfident managers from those who have access to private information, we combine being a net buyer of own company stock with the performance of the company. First, we interact net buyer with bad performance to have an extended measure of overconfidence. Additional to this, we also interact a net buyer dummy with a good performer dummy to proxy for managers having private information. An interaction dummy of being a bad performer and being a net buyer of own company stocks gives stronger results than the net buyer dummy alone. Overconfident CEOs purchase more and sell less. When we use an interaction dummy of being a good performer and a net buyer of own company stocks, it even has opposite impacts on purchasing and sales activities indicating that CEOs with private information behave and trade different from overconfident CEOs.

With the introduction of bachelor and master programs, the German education system at the level of universities and universities of applied sciences has undergone significant changes. This holds also true for undergraduate real estate education in Germany: well-established players had to redesign their programs while prospective students have seen many new competitors with new undergraduate real estate programs appearing on the scene. Students are thus faced with a wide range of options to choose the right course of studies, keeping in mind their prospect to start a successful career in real estate. In this context, this paper aims to analyse the main determinants of success for real estate bachelor programs in Germany. In a comparative approach to the competitive landscape, the study analyses the main elements of well-established as well as more recently initiated undergraduate real estate programs, focussing on an empirical, in-depth case study of the newcomer Hochschule Aschaffenburg where different stakeholders of the program will be interviewed. The goal is to elaborate the main determinants of success for real estate programs to help real estate bachelors to succeed in the industry. Besides, market entry barriers for newcomers to the real estate educational market will be derived.

Someoneís housing career can be described as climbing up a ladder. You start at the bottom when you rent a room and end with buying your dream house. In between you take the steps of renting a dwelling and buying several dwellings. In The Netherlands, the housing career ladder worked until the late nineties. Since the nineties housing prices of owner-occupied dwellings increased much more than the incomes. Thus making it more diificult for households to buy a dwelling. This created missing steps in the housing career ladder, which resulted in stopping people from moving up the ladder. To enable people to walk up the ladder again, several ideas were presented for creating extra steps in the ladder by the government and housing associations. One of the most famous constructions is that housing associations give a discount on the selling price of their dwellings and share the profit with the owner when the dwelling is sold again. In most cases the dwellings are sold back to the housing associations and then sold again to somebody else. This enables households with lower incomes to buy a dwelling. Besides providing owner-occupied dwellings for households with lower incomes, housing associations also hope that the livability of the neighbourhoods were these houses are situated is going the be improved. Which is also good to increase the added value on the dwelling for the buyer; dwellings in better neighbourhoods are sold for a higher price. The question is if this construction is actually used as an extra step in the housing career ladder. Thus is it used by households at the beginning of the housing career ladder who have lower incomes? And when they sell the dwelling are they moving up the ladder, thus buying a more expensive dwelling? And does the livability of the neighbourhood actually improve? This paper will answer these questions. First, several of these selling constructions will be discussed. After that it will be examined if the households actually use this construction to climb up the housing career ladder. For this part, a large recurring survey among households who use one type of this construction will be used. Then it will be examined if the livability of neighbourhoods increased since the constructions are introduced. To examine this, a large livability survey among households living in these neighbourhoods is used. The paper ends with some concluding remarks.

In the services management literature the role of the customer as co-producer of a service is widely described. At the moment there is a shift in the services management literature from a focus on company-centric co-production to a focus on joint co-creation of value between supplier and customer. In the real estate investment literature there has not been much focus on the value creation from a service or a service supply chain perspective. Owners of real estate can however be seen as suppliers of space for rent and tenants can be viewed as the customers. Based on a literature review about the joint co-creation of value in services management, this paper explores the possibilities how co-creation of value can be established in the real estate investment industry in a business to business environment. One of the key findings is that owners need to have an understanding of the customer learning process and relationship experience processes as well an understanding of their own learning process and customer experience process. When other participants are involved in the supply chain, such as real estate agents and property managers who can be viewed as suppliers to the owner and the tenant, it means that more time needs to be spent on understanding. Time can be reduced if more parts of the service process is managed like a production process with clear specifications enhancing the understanding.

Due to globalisation and monetary integration the macroeconomic conditions for industrial countries have become more and more equally. Based on a factor analysis we examine if the synchronisation of business cycles also affected the co-movement of house prices in OECD-countries for the period of 1990 to 2010. As it turns out, the integration of housing markets has accelerated in the last decade. We can identify a strong global factor as well as a regional factor. However, some countries like Germany, the Netherlands and Japan seem to be uncoupled from the global trend. Furthermore, the co-movement of markets with greater proximity is generally stronger. Although globalisation seems to foster the integration of housing markets, monetary integration has only a minor effect. We illustrate our results by referring to methods well-known from cluster-analysis.

Building management ought to be of paramount importance to sustainable development. It slows down a buildingís depreciation rate, delays redevelopment needs, and reduces construction waste. Despite various benefits brought about by building management, apartment owners are, in general, not willing to contribute to organizing for their management. Due to the fragmented ownership of apartment buildings and the fact that the responsibility of management is shared by all owners, collective action problems are common in the management process. Based on the collective action theory, this paper explores the reasons behind the problematic nature of building management and evaluates the effectiveness of three types of solution: individualist, centralized, and institutionalist. Using a case study, the paper demonstrates the results of a fusion of the three solutions in managing a residential estate with 22 apartment building blocks. It concludes that a combination of the three solutions is possible and conducive to solving collective action problems. It further suggests that institutions, central authorities, and selective incentives should be introduced to help apartment owners manage their buildings. The findings of this study contribute to the formulation of government policies to promote effective building management in apartment buildings.

The crisis which has hit the economies of the Western countries has with regard to the real estate market resulted in a break of the trend of the real estate cycle. As a result of that the past is no longer a mirror for the future developments. And by that those future developments are far more difficult to predict losing the old familiar stronghold of the cycle effects. This strikes especially the up-set of the Discounted Cash Flow calculations. In this paper a sketch is given about the new reality at that field and the situation of the trend-break one is in nowaday till the moment there is sight upon the new set real estate cycle with its own trendline.

Consumption behavior is about understanding human actions, which contributes to a better understanding of the rationale of the market choices of consumers. While real estates transactions are usually modeled as economic transactions, we introduce the element of ethnicity that denotes a tribal belonging and the lifestyle as predictors of housing consumption in Kampala, Uganda. The paper examined how attitudes of consumers, ethnicity and lifestyle influence the choice of residential space using a sample drawn from Kampala in a cross sectional study. The empirical findings suggest that the current pattern in housing residential consumption is explained by the dynamics of lifestyle and ethnicity of the residents of Kampala city. Finally, the findings will have policy implications for the development of real estates market that is heterogonous and diverse in Kampala.

Nowadays, the indicators used to determine the real estate_s contribution to business activities in most organization are primarily focused on cost reduction or capital minimization. However, what is often not realized is that property can also assist revenue enhancement. This paper highlights the synthesis of previous studies from 1990 to 2010 in relation to the corporate real estate function. The considerations include the task of CRE executives that influence the shareholder_s wealth. The trends of the corporate real estate function are discussed. In summary, by recognizing the important of CRE function, it will provide the greatest support to CRE executives in public listed companies to enhance share price performance and dividend growth.

Real Estate often represents a major part of company assets. In European companies, Real Estate makes up an average of 6 per cent of total assets, while the importance of the property has barely changed in the last decade. The real estate ownership ratio of German companies for example, has been relatively constant at 70 percent. However, the environment in which the companies operate has changed significantly over the years. This vastly changing and increasingly international environment provides companies with new challenges in Corporate Real Estate Management (CREM), which have to be mastered by flexible and simple structures containing ìlearning characterî. In a first step, existing forms of organizational models for Corporate Real Estate Management have been determined and structured through various expert interviews and years of consulting experience in the market. It became obvious that on the market many types of Corporate Real Estate Management models exist, which mainly differ in terms of centralization vs. decentralization of core processes, responsibilities and competences. In a second step, an evaluation was conducted about the advantages and disadvantages of the existing CREM models; furthermore the models were assessed regarding whether they fulfilled their requirements. Moreover, organizational models were identified which combine rising production requirements concerning the property, increasing number of trends and innovations within the Real Estate market as well as combining and fulfilling the structural challenges in an international context. An essential part of the study is to rate the individual advantages and disadvantages of each model and to show how a global Corporate Real Estate Management can be built in an efficient and standardized manner.

Since the nineties of the last century - due to the influence of international trends ñ the role pattern of Corporate Real Estate Management (CREM) of big companies and organizations is developed from pure operational to ñ to a large extent ñ strategic. Some of the top priorities were: ï New developments of headquarters ï Real Estate as profitable asset in Portfolio Management ï Inside-company lease or rent out: a separate real estate ëcompany inside the companyí It sometimes was seen as a kind of strategic playground for CEOís, but as one of the results of the declining economic growth in the first decade of the new century and certainly after the break out of the worldwide financial crisis in 2008/2009, the strategic asset of corporate real estate is declining and the operational benefits are rediscovered again. The Eindhoven University of Technology ñ the host University of this yearís ERES 2011 Conference ñ has changed its processes of maintenance and control in a way, that it could be a matter of re-invention: ï Distance its self from an ñ exclusive - strategic approach. ï But not going back to the ñ original ñ small technical (building, electrical and mechanical engineering) basis. ï But to a new, on innovative and rally demand driven CREM organization on direct production and services focused operational restructuring, maintenance and control. This re-invention leads to a brand new focus on policy and on daily work processes from the staff of the Division Maintenance and Control ñ where one of the authors is leading manager. The re-invention is illustrated with the casus of one of the University Campus buildings. The paper could be an initial guide for modernization for CREM organizations. But ñ in times of the actual financial crisis ñ could also be an eye-opener for commercial real estate companies, whose lack of interest for their actual renters of their assets is often so huge, that ñ in general ñ one even doesnít know the names of the included firms!

Owners, managers and occupiers of existing buildings are keen to understand if and how enhanced sustainability performance does pay in terms of cost savings. The Building Research Establishment (BRE) says in itís BRE Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM): ìBREEAM in-use (BiU) is a scheme to help building managers reduce the running costs and improve the environmental performance of existing buildingsî. But so far there is only little evidence available on cost savings that have been achieved by applying the BREEAM in-use standard. This paper is presenting a selection of case studies on BiU certified office and retail properties across Europe. In an online research on literature and BiU, behavioural options of owners, managers and occupiers are studied in order to reach a better understanding of how organisational decisions impact on cost savings. Observations are collected on site-visits at labelled properties. Experience is compiled in interviews with asset managers and sustainability assessors. Finally, the relations between sustainability profiles of certified buildings and best practice behaviour of owners, managers and occupiers are analysed. Conclusions are drawn on recommendations easy to implement for quick cost savings from behavioural improvements along the BiU standard.

Financial flexibility describes the ability of a firm to access and restructure its financing by avoiding financial distress in the face of negative shocks, and by funding investment when profitable opportunities arise. General finance literature as well as real estate specific studies are not able to produce consistent capital structure results based on classical research. This study empirically examines the US-REIT and US-REOC industry for different cash flow sensitivities, whereas firms make financing and investment decisions jointly subject to the identity constraint that sources must equal uses of cash. A panel vector autoregressive model is employed to account for the interdependent and intertemporal dynamics of financing, investment and operating decisions. The addition of exogenous variables allows to compare the results to former capital structure theories and provides robustness of the model.

The purpose of the paper is to verify whether the version of neighbourhoods created from the lowest geographical level improve a predictive accuracy of hedonic model in comparison with those based on upper geographical levels. Methodology/approach ñ The paper proposes a method for defining neighbourhoods from Thiessen polygons created around the points of apartments. These polygons occupy the whole analysed area and are used as the spatial units for clustering. The clustering technique is based on contiguity of polygons and fuzzy equality of the principal components of their attributes. Clustering is started at different geographical levels: municipalities, smaller traffic analysis zones, and apartmentsí Thiessen polygons. The ordinary least squares (OLS) and spatial error techniques are applied in hedonic price models with different versions of neighbourhoods. Originality/value ñ Neighbourhoods can be defined using the Thiessen polygons of individual observations. This very ìbottom upî approach can minimise dependency from existing political, administrative and other boundaries. The clustering technique is based on fuzzy equality and does not need the a priori determination of a number of clusters, while contiguity and hierarchical nature of neighbourhoods are considered. Findings ñ With OLS regression, the superiority of Thiessen polygons is evident in both in-sample analysis and ex-sample prediction. When we control for spatial effect with a spatial error technique, the clusters of Thiessen polygons do not always provide the best outcome, and their superiority is contested by the highest geographical level of municipalities.

Almost twenty years ago, Needham (1992) introduced a theoretical approach to explain land prices when the supply of building plots in is in the hand of public agencies. In this situation, he argued it is not only certain economic principles (e.g. competition) which are of importance to explain prices, but also political choices made by the public agencies which sell the building plots. That is, maximum land prices which could be realized were especially affected by the political choices (i.e. prices) of other municipalities in the region (Needham, 1992). Public agencies (mainly municipalities) used to be involved in different market segments in the Netherlands, but over the years private parties have largely taken over this role in the residential and office markets. There is one market segment however in which municipalities continue to be fully active: the industrial land market. The theoretical approach coined by Needham will be applied to this particular market in order to explain empirically industrial land prices. Thus, the question that will be addressed is how municipalities determine eventual selling prices of land. To answer this question we empirically investigate land values, by means of regression analysis. The assumptions are that municipalities pitch in above prevailing regional selling prices of building plots when the quality of the land is significantly better than existing industrial land and that they pitch in below prevailing selling prices of building plots when there is strong competition from other municipalities in the regional market. Addressing this question has particular relevance for the Dutch industrial land market, since many believe that municipalities drop building plot prices even below cost price when they perceive high competition from other municipalities(see e.g. Needham & Louw, 2006). The results of this study can be of importance also to other countries where land is supplied publicly. Furthermore, we believe it is important to analyze more extensively the determination of land prices since there is a lack of empirical studies addressing developersí behavior in determining land prices, be they private or public (Leishman, Jones, & Fraser, 2000). Leishman, C., Jones, C., & Fraser, W. (2000). The Influence of Uncertainty on House Builder Behaviour and Residential Land Values. Journal of Property Research, 17(2), 147-168. Needham, B. (1992). A Theory of Land Prices When Land Is Supplied Publicly: The Case of the Netherlands. Urban Studies, 29(5), 669. Needham, B., & Louw, E. (2006). Institutional Economics and Policies for Changing Land Markets: The Case of Industrial Estates in the Netherlands. Journal of Property Research, 23(1), 75-90.

An effective asset risk score would enable fund managers to construct portfolios most appropriate to their clientís risk appetite. As an assetís risk profile changes over time, such a risk score needs to be dynamic and change as the assetís characteristics change. This will enable the investor to monitor whether the asset continues to meet their investment requirements. Such asset risk scores could also be used as the basis for performance sub-indices by risk bands, for example high, medium and low risk assets. The performance characteristics of these sub-indices will also inform investor asset allocation strategies and allow an exploration of the relationship between asset risk and ex-post asset returns.

This study aims to explain the price gap between high and low-end houses by evaluating four categories of reasons, including nominal influences, real influences, investment demand, and housing supply. The price gap is measured as the logarithm of the ratio of the price indices of Class D&E (large units) and that of small Class A (small units). Since we use price indices rather than actual prices, the price gap can be negative even though Class D&E units are always more expensive than Class A units. The sign of the gap depends on the base period. According to Rating and Valuation Department, both price indices are set to 100 in the year of 1999, so the price gap in the base year 1999 equals 0 by definition. In other periods, a zero price gap means that the prices of Class A and D&E units changed by the same amount since the base period, while a positive price gap means that the price of Class D&E units increased more, or decreased less, than the price of Class A units since the base period. From a financial perspective, the price gap can also be interpreted as a cumulative excess return since the base period ñ the cumulative Class D&E return minus the cumulative Class A return. The price gap will be regressed on these four categories of factors: 1) factors of nominal influences, such as inflation rate; 2) factors of real influences, such as unemployment rate, real wages and numbers of household formation; 3) factors of investment demand, such as mortgage ceiling, performance of alternative investments, stamp duty and property market yields; 4) factors of housing supply, such as supply of high and low-end houses. Quarterly data over the period of 1980:Q1 ñ 2009:Q4 in Hong Kong will be employed.

During the 1990s and early 2000s a body of literature emerged that explores and seeks to improve property portfolio risk diversification strategies. The studies were motivated by the view that strategies commonly used are suboptimum because of the reliance, due to data availability, on political administrative regions to represent asset classes. Asset classes should comprise homogeneous assets, with comparable (if not identical) risk and return profiles. This enables investors to follow the diversification principles set out by Markowitz (1952). However, political administrative regions are not based on property market fundamentals, nor, indeed, economic fundamentals in most cases, but on historic and governmental factors. Individual regions may contain, for example, both urban and rural areas; prospering and declining areas; and manufacturing and service employment centres. Looking to the fundamentals of property market performance, these contrasting characteristics underpin differential investment outcomes. These studies have consistently challenged the use of administrative regions by investors for the diversification of risk, finding local area characteristics and property market fundamentals as important in portfolio strategy. The focus of the paper is to re-evaluate these studies, now that sufficient time has passed for data to become available to assess what would have happened if investors had followed the diversification strategies suggested. A sample of 73 local markets is analysed using total returns data from IPDís UK Key Centres 2008 report, reflecting institutional property investment trends and market performance over the ten year period 1998-2007. Efficient frontiers are developed that enable evaluation of the opportunities presented by the classifications of local markets and, in addition, sectoral and regional market segregation. The optimal weightings suggested by the classifications are compared to actual aggregate institutional investment weightings. The differences in allocation are explored. The analysis is then extended to cover different phases of market performance.

Given a firm's investment policy, its dividend policy is irrelevant (Miller and Modigliani (1961)). REITs, by law, pay at least 90 percent of their corporate income into dividends so their dividend policy is given. This is flipping of the dividend irrelevance theorem. Such a high dividend payment also means lower retained earnings so little free cash flow. Jensen (1986) argues lower free cash flow results in mitigated agency problems. In this paper, I ask 2 questions - first, how an average REIT, given its dividend policy, responds to its investment opportunities and second, if an average REIT (with mitigated agency problems) faces lower financing constraints. For the 1st question, I find that an average REITs investment responsiveness is higher than other firms. For the 2nd question, I find that an average REIT faces, in fact, higher financing constraints than other firms.

This study aims at testing whether, and to what extent, chain affiliation within regional and super-regional shopping centers affects store rent levels. In this paper, based on the hedonic methodology, international, national, provincial as well as local chains are considered together with independent stores. The impact of store prestige on rents is also assessed. The research is performed in a Canadian context, with eleven regional and super-regional shopping centres located in Quebec City (5) and Montreal (6) being used, totalling over three million square feet of gross leasable area (GLA). Anchor stores and storage space are excluded from the analysis. Once filtered, the database consists of 1,477 valid leases running over the 2000-2003 period. Unit base rent is used as the dependent variable while regressors include: GLA, the shopping center weighted age, a location variable, lease duration, a time variable, the percentage rent rate, a series of retail category variables, the shopping center concentration index, an economic potential index, the retail chain affiliation level and, finally, a store level-of-prestige descriptor. Findings suggest that, even when micro-market influences are accounted for, chain-affiliated stores are granted a rent discount by landlords, with the latter ranging between 4.9% (Quebec City) and 6.0% (Montreal). Findings also suggest that a substantial rent premium is assigned to high-prestige stores. Based on this research, the high-prestige rent premium stands at 10.5% for Quebec City shopping centers while it reaches 13.0% for Montreal retail establishments.

The interest in sustainable and energy efficient buildings has been increased over the last years due to global changes with regard to ecological, economic, political and social issues. Nevertheless, awareness regarding the effect of sustainability issues on property value on the German real estate market is still limited. Against this background, the effects of currently emerging long-term developments such as global climate change, ageing society or rising energy prices are not or only insufficiently taken into account in common property valuation methods employed today, even though they can significantly affect the long-term value of a property. However, recent research findings underlined sustainable properties that can handle long-term changes of exogenous framework conditions will be marketable in the future and maintain their value as well. Therefore, the aim of this study is set to identify and operationalize value-related sustainability attributes of a property. On the occasion of different national standards, restrictions, market behaviors and employed methodologies, the object of investigation is narrowed to the valuation of German office buildings with the German income capitalization approach and the discounted cash flow method. In this context, various relevant scenarios are identified and analyzed. Subsequent, the value-related sustainability attributes of a property are derived from qualitative long-term changes in ecological, economic, political and social framework conditions with a clear direction which allow forecasts of the effect on the value of property: It can be assumed that these changes can result in different requirements for properties and, account on this, effect the property value. Furthermore, they will give evidence of the risk of a property depreciating value or the opportunity of gaining value due to these developments. By the means of this study, sustainability issues which are either not or only insufficiently taken into account, can be thus regarded and integrated into the assessment that results in more transparent evaluations.

Ongoing changes in international and US financial reporting systems have engendered pressing measurement issues, mainly related to the use of fair value. Fair Value Measurements (FVM) is a subject of debate for both academics and practitioners. Theoretical research by Bushman and Smith (2001), Moreover, Martin et.al (2006) Hitz (2007) has been relatively circumspect about the appropriateness of FVM for accounting purpose. FVM of assets for which no liquid market exists has stimulated debate in a group of professions like accounting, auditing and appraisal but also is a hot topic from regulators and investors point of view. Two solutions have been proposed: a) using independent experts and b) development of the standards and guidelines by practitionersí associations. In European Union we expect a common practice and similar knowledge in fair value measurement of real estate properties. Our study involves an analysis of reevaluation practice and reevaluation results of the most important listed entities on the European Markets: Austrian Stock Exchange, Bolsas y Mercados Espanoles, Borsa Italia , Bucharest Stock Exchange, Bulgarian Stock Exchange, Euronext Paris, Frankfurt Stock Exchange, London Stock Exchange etc.

The explanations provided in the literature for community-level variations in constant-quality house prices vary from urban economics (e.g., distance from the Central Business District) to local public economics (e.g., property tax rate) to urban-amenities theory (e.g., crime rate). This paper examines the impact of distance from the city centre on values of residential apartment units in Vienna. Data on individual owner assessments of apartment value along with other hedonic determinants of housing value is obtained from a popular online database of apartment units available for sale. The three candidates for the location variable include the district in which the apartment units are located, a categorical variable classifying location into three groups -the centre, neighbouring districts and outskirts in addition to estimates of distance from a predefined point in the city centre to the apartment units. The control variables of the analysis include number of rooms, living area, number of the floor, number of bathrooms and toilets, availability of balcony / terrace / elevator / basement and type of flooring in addition to the information if the unit is furnished. The first part of the article examines the possible influence of distance and other location variables on the price of a constant-quality apartment. The results demonstrate a negative relation between distance from the city centre and apartment price. The tests employed to empirically explore if there is spatial autocorrelation in the residual series suggest use of the spatial autoregressive error model (SEM) as appropriate. The estimation results of the spatial model are very similar to those of the base model, suggesting that the results produced by the base model are not an outcome of any misspecification of the model.

Housing is one of the major socio-economic problems in Turkey. Widespread spontaneous settlements in urban area may be accepted as the sufficient criterion for the level of housing question in Turkey. Additionally, there are important quality problems in existing housing units. This problematic structure may be also explained by the lack of efficient housing policies and housing finance system. It seems after 2003 that housing policy of Turkey is essentially based on the Housing Development Administration_s (HDA) pragmatic approaches. In this context, we may argue that the current housing policy is one-dimensional and also would be unsustainable in some perspectives. In this experimental research, the author attempts to analyze limitations and clear/potential problems of the housing policies of HDA. We basically analyze whether affordable housing problem is minimize with alternative policies and required incentives. In this context, we review housing subsidies and PPPs as the instruments of alternative social/private rental housing supply models. In a broader perspective, the original contribution of this paper is to examine private rental housing, social rental housing, urban renewal, micro-finance and housing production of REITs as the alternative housing supply/finance models to improve affordable housing. We conclude that these alternative housing supply/finance models may improve housing affordability and hence minimize the housing question in Turkey, if they can optimally design and required incentives may meet by the central/local governments.

At a more global scale, the economic importance of infrastructure has been the subject of extensive research since the late 1980s (Finkenzeller and Dechant, 2009). Impelled by the mounting pressure associated with increasing demand for infrastructure coupled with the growing significance of infrastructure, the World Economic Forum (2008) has been committed to an annual global competitiveness report (GCR) reflecting on infrastructure as one of the key drivers of a countryís economic attractiveness and competitiveness, next only to institutional framework. However, there is a growing gap between infrastructure requirements and the ability of the public sector to adequately meet those needs given the large scale of infrastructure financing and governmentsí budgetary constraints, consequently, there is a cogent need to seek alternative and innovative vehicles to finance infrastructure. In the recent time, government across jurisdictions have begun to accept the public private partnership model as a practicable option for mitigating the escalating infrastructure investment shortfall, and this is expected to persist into the future until there is a more viable alternative to the PPP model. A total of 1887 PPP transactions have been identified from the infrastructure journal (IJ) database, covering a twenty two quarterly periods (Q1 2005-Q2 2010). The study examines the various financing options and trend of PPP investment across these periods using the time series modeler (TSM) to determine significant predictors/sectors of PPP transactions globally and across the leading countries within each region, revealing an enhanced signal of investorsí focus and disposition within the PPP markets.

All over the world, the case of urban marginal lands has been a source of controversy between the urban poor, indigenous people and the government. One of the Cardinal objectives of any informed government is the provision of social services, security and infrastructure for the citizenry. The urban poor or indigenous people sees the marginal lands as abandoned and useless to the authorities and cheap for them to develop and inhabit. More often, inhabitants of these areas are menial workers, civil servants, petty traders who can not afford the exorbitant rents paid in the city centers. These areas are usually characterized by high crime rate, lack of planning, lack of basic amenities, diseases etc. Hence, it behoves on any government to change the physical appearance of this areas by improving on the planning and provision of infrastructure to make life meaningful to the dwellers This has often been misunderstood by the indigenous people or urban poor to mean a deliberate ploy to disposses them of the land and render them homeless. These fears are sometimes genuine because previous exercises ended with these lands given to the rich and political class after improvements have been done on them by the government The Port Harcourt City scenerio are typical of the above. Port Harcourt has well over 45 water front communities which the government has indicated interest to acquire and develop for social and economic reasons. Two Case studies are chosen from Nigeria and South Africa. This paper looks critically at the problems associated with the effort to recover these lands from the urban poor and aborigines for development by government.

Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects offer realisation and life cycle services for real estate by a fixed charge. For the awarding of PPP contracts the most efficient bid has to be recognized to ensure an efficient application of tax money corresponding to public procurement rules. Efficiency of a PPP bid is not obviously because of the output oriented tender, real estate specific characteristics and long contract periods of the partnerships. The efficiency of a PPP project is expressed by the cost-benefit-ratio. For a calculation of the cost-benefit-ratio of PPP projects a systematic analysis method will be presented. The newly developed method supports public clients (and private companies) by determination of the parameters cost and benefit. In a transparent way the most efficient PPP bid can be identified with this method. The analysis method is based on four levels. On the first level criteria for evaluation of bids are determined, based on user requirements. These criteria are worked out and weighted with help of quality function deployment (QFD) method of Prof. Akao. It ensures that user and client requirements are the important facts for the evaluation of benefit by a PPP project. The weighted criteria become part of the tender documents to support bidding companies by showing the important issues for the user and client and to reach best quality of real estate and related services in sense of the client. After submission of private companyís bids, the method which is presented supports on its second level the identification and objective evaluation of the benefits of a certain bid for the planned PPP project. Therefore evaluation schemes of single quality aspects in three categories building, operation and management are worked out in a catalogue. The objective benefit assessment generates a quality competition for the best real estate and services for the public client. The third level enables the user of the method to analyse the costs of a PPP bid. This cost analysis is based on a further development of German calculation standard for PPP total cost calculation. On the fourth level of the newly developed analysis method the most efficient PPP bid is going to be named due to the best benefit-cost-ratio. Due to the identification of the most efficient bid follows legal security for awarding the contract. Competition for best quality and cost transparency through the new method lead to best value for tax money.

Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects offer realisation and life cycle services for real estate by a fixed charge. By procurement of real estate as PPP the bids are complex due to real estate specifics, different kinds of offered services (planning, construction and facility management), output specifying tenders and long term contracts based on assumptions of future developments. Nevertheless awarding of PPP contracts has to follow public procurement rules. Awarding of contract has to be transparent, the bidders have to be treated equally and the most efficient tender has to be accepted. Therefore the most efficient bid has to be recognized to ensure an economical efficient application of tax money corresponding to public procurement rules. Up to now there are several uncertainties for the determination of economical efficiency of PPP bids. As a result there are caveats against contract awarding in several public real estate projects. A solution for an equal and transparent treating of all bidders through a newly developed method is presented below. The method enables the equal and transparent determination of the efficiency of PPP bids. The public client and the bidding companies achieve legal certainty and avoid future caveat by usage of the method and the defined terms.

The Australian Federal Government has recently legislated to make it compulsory for all commercial offices to disclose their energy efficiency rating when the property is being disposed of, either by lease or freehold sale. The legislation is part of the governmentís sustainability and carbon reduction initiative. This paper investigates the implications of these changes for property managers. It will critically analyse the process which brought about the legislation and report on the implementation of the scheme, its early operation and issues faced by owners, managers and occupiers in complying with the legislation. Energy disclosure mandates the use of the New South Wales Governmentís NABERS rating tools. The paper critiques the operation of this tool and the impacts of mandatory application of a former voluntary tool. In order to meet these legislative requirements asset managers will need to continually monitor their energy consumption and maintain accurate records of tenant movements within their portfolio. The paper investigates the industry level of engagement with the scheme, the preparedness of the key stakeholders to meet the requirements and the likely effects the scheme will have on property transactions.

Numerous higher education establishments now offer real estate studies as a course of study in its own right. A growing number of institutions has adapted its curricula along Bologna principles and offers MSc degree courses, which usually involves the production of a masterís thesis during the last semester. This raises an issue of accessibility. If these theses are only produced in a limited number of hard copies and only registered in a library catalogue, they run the risk of ending up as grey literature, and their potential use (by library users) is restricted. Accessibility could be improved considerably by electronic publishing, which presupposes the availability of information about the existence of these academic theses. This paper presents pertaining solutions chosen by five different institutions in Europe. The authors demonstrate the option of using an existing library catalogue and present the Austrian example of a central library on real estate. In conclusion the authors discuss how a collection of master theses can be linked up to the ERES Digital Library.

Recently, public sector property asset management has come into focus for a variety of reasons. Firstly, public sector finances are severely constrained in most western countries and property represents a significant cost to national and local governments. Secondly, the need to provide a greater range services requires that new property assets be developed. Two broad schools of thought have emerged as a result. One is the school of thought suggesting that corporate asset management structures from the private be incorporated into public sector asset management, including a full cost and benefit analysis incorporating life-cycle costs. The second is that the State of Government simply provide the services and consider property simply as a factor of production of those services with a focus simply on cost reduction. Within a New Zealand context, a philosophy emerged in the mid-1980s that views Governmental services within a framework of ìentrepreneurial governance.î This change has led to a variety of public sector property management outcomes and may illustrate a possible hybrid of these two schools of thought. This paper will review the emergence of New Zealand public sector asset management from this entrepreneurial framework and provide examples of how it has been both successful and has led to unexpected outcomes.

The Estonian economy has quickly adjusted to new circumstances brought about by the global crisis. Weak domestic demand due to the decrease in incomes and worsening situation in the labor market is still the main source of negative impact on the economy. But the Estonian economy began to grow again in the fourth quarter of 2009 and already in 2010 the economic growth was stronger than expected. The recovery is mostly based on exports. Since January 2011 Estonia is the 17th member of EMU. The development of the housing market was rapidly growing until 2007: demand exceeds supply for housing; bank finance allocated to real estate was very high comparison to total lending etc. The end of the housing boom shows that there is a need for more attention to the housing affordability problem. Situation in the real estate market changed in 2008 and it seems to be more stabilized in 2011, but the questions about the affordability of housing still remain. This article seeks answers how to define housing affordability for Estonian housing market. Also describes the regulatory framework and policy decisions made by the government. It is difficult to measure regulatory frameworks impact to the housing market, but are the Estonian households able to afford the housing? The article seeks the answer on how to evaluate the current situation and prognosticate potential development trends.

The global climate change is an ongoing process which is significantly affected by human activities. Due to the impact to our and future generations as well as the restraint of resources it is necessary to countervail the growing global environmental issues. The real estate industry plays a major role in the context of global structural mutation and is therefore forced to act responsible to implement a long term awareness dealing according to the Triple-Bottom-Line framework. But not just out of legislation driven obligations it is important to follow a CSR-Agenda, also to derive possible future benefits to the environment. Because of the significance of the discount rate within real estate investment, appraisal and valuation, this study critically examines the way discount and cap rates work in traditional cost-benefit analysis and valuation methods. Ethical and intergenerational aspects to the future social welfare will be reflected against the results. The contribution of the paper is to put real estate, its environmental responsibility and intergenerational consequences into an interrelated context.

The last decennia more transparency has entered the real estate markets in many countries because of the increase of performance measurement of institutional real estate holdings by the Investment Property Databank IPD. The performance measurement consists of direct return, mainly based on net rental income and indirect return based upon (yearly)valuations of the properties. Quite a number of investors invest not only in their home country but in other countries as well. Especially since the introduction of the Euro, real estate investors became even more interested in investing cross border since between euro countries the exchange rate risk disappeared. However, the question is how well can we compare valuations in one country to the other ? What are the similarities in the valuations across countries, what are the differences? To investigate that and in cooperation with IPD and RICS we have set up a survey to find out the differences between the countries, initially for 8 countries : France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Spain and the UK. The initial findings show already how different valuations in each country are and that adjustments will be necessary to allow for a realistic comparison of indirect returns. The ultimate intention is to expand to all European countries within the EU and hopefully also to other continents as well.

This study analyzed the impact of the global financial crisis on the Polish real estate market. Presented are the prices on the housing markets in several Polish cities against the backdrop of the situation on the stock exchange, the labor market and the price of money. It was examined how the price and number of transactions were changing in the initial phase of the crisis, during its apogee, and during the current process of coming out of the crisis. The research period is 2006- 2010. It covers the period of the greatest prosperity in the real estate market and of the financial crisis. The study describes three local real estate markets (of western, central and eastern Poland). These markets, which do not belong to the leading markets in the country, are so interesting because they can be a potential investment niche.

In the second term of 2006 Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia, experienced the largest retail growth in the Asian Pacific region. With more than 130 commercials venues in 2010, the growth of Jakartaís shopping centers is not only reflected in numbers but also in their physical size. In part, this evolution of shopping centers reflects the globalization of shopping centers development and major retailers. The location, composition and design of such centers strongly resemble other shopping centers in the Asian Pacific and the United States. At the same time, however, other centers seem more unique to Indonesia. In that sense, it is rather difficult to univocally assign these centers to the categories used in the classification suggested by International Council on Shopping Center Classifications (ICSC). The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze the evolution of shopping centers in Jakarta using data from 1960-2010. To that end, the evolution of the shopping center in Jakarta is compared to global milestones in shopping center history identified in the literature on shopping centers. Possible reasons such as the physical impact of the decline in business and influence of the Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) will be discussed. By mapping the data, it is found that the growth of shopping centers in Jakarta is scattered and generated some new clusters. In addition to the city-level description of the evolution of shopping centers in Jakarta, a more detailed account will be given of one such cluster. This case study is meant to illustrate that the retail development process is dominantly driven by (semi-)copying behavior. New real estate developers tend to add similar properties that either attract similar businesses serving the same market segment or attract business that serve totally different market segments. Consequently, the properties within the same market segment tend to focus more now on services as opposed to physical appearance and kind of stores.

In an increasingly global investment climate, mobile capital interested in residential investment generally seeks the highest return on invested capital (cap rate). However, we observe a very large range in these values. Systematic differences may be explained by tax rates, demographics, regional factors, net migration, political structure and transition, homeownership rates, and other social and economic indicators. For this preliminary investigation, a set of data from Global Property Guide, an on-line investor-related service that has upper-end residential sales and rental information in over 100 countries, was augmented by World Bank data for 2010. A second data set by UN Habitat covers many less-affluent nations during a transitionary period in the world economy during the 1990s is also available. For 2010, factors related to national affluence, availability of credit, and transaction costs were associated with lower residential cap rates. In 1998, only regional dummy variables for politics are significant for developing countries.

In the debate on sustainable energy use, one important aspect tends to be systematically overlooked. Sustainability may be increased by developing technological innovations and measures to promote energy conservation, but so-called rebound effects constitute a potential and largely underestimated impediment towards the accomplishment of the intended goals. In short, these rebound or take back effects involve the spending of monetary savings from energy conservation on activities or the acquisition of goods that, in their turn, will enhance energy use or environmental pollution. Such activities or purchases (e.g. taking longer showers, adding more lighting to the garden, buying a dryer or a waterbed, or booking an additional holiday flight) might reduce or even cancel out the beneficial effects that were intended in the first place. Partly because these effects seem to be neglected in most research on sustainable energy use, it is difficult to estimate their size and impact. This paper provides insight into the results of an exploratory study of energy related behavior and energy related purchases indicating rebound effects in Dutch energy efficient dwellings. It is concluded that there is a likely presence of rebound effects in both these respects. The discussion entails suggestions for counteracting rebound effects together with recommendations to highlight this phenomenon in future research.

Although there are numerous good reasons for real estate analysts to construct housing submarkets, there is little clarity about how this might best be done in practice. The existing literature offers a variety of techniques based on principal components analysis, cluster analysis and other statistical procedures. This paper asks whether, given their market expertise and their role in disseminating information and shaping search patterns and bid formation, real estate agents might over a less data intensive method of submarket construction. The empirical research is based on an experiment that compares the performance of submarket boundaries constructed in consultation with agents with those identified using standard statistical methods for partitioning housing data. The analysis uses data on 2,175 transactions that took place in Istanbul, Turkey between November 2006 and March 2007. The results do not imply the absolute superiority of any single method but they do suggest that expert-defined boundaries tend to perform at least as well as alternative construction techniques. Importantly this suggests that this cost-effective method might help remove one constraint that has limited the adoption of submarkets by real estate analysts and planners in emerging markets context where rich datasets are not readily available.

Many indicators/indices related to real estate markets are either based on list prices or selling prices whereas the latter is usually related to private data. Therefore, the relationship between these two data sets could hardly be investigated. The research in this Ph.D. work aims to enlarge the existing body of knowledge in this area.The data set in an initial part of the study comprises 1,274 transactions of owner-occupied residential properties in rural areas of Rhineland-Palatinate (Germany). The list prices are obtained from ImmoScout24, the largest German real estate brokerage website. The selling prices are acquired from official (yet private) appraisal sources that collect every real estate contract of sale in Germany. It is found that, on average, selling prices are -15.2% (-20,605 Ä) lower than the stated list prices. Moreover, 10% of the sellers had been forced to reduce the list price by more than -33.3% (-47,750 Ä) until a transaction was realized. This indicates that many sellers overestimate the value of their own property, especially in an illiquid real estate market. Several other studies from the USA or Canada came to similar conclusions. In contrast to these studies, this work found that the difference between list price and selling price is not related to common demographic, economic or location characteristics. The owner accuracy regression only indicates a strong influence of the absolute amount of the list price and the age of the dwelling structure. Besides, it is shown that list prices as such are not a perfectly reliable data source. Firstly, it is difficult to match list price and selling price of one single property because often several list prices exist for one single property. Secondly, the time-on-market and changes of the list prices are unknown, yet important to determine the selling price. The same issues applied to many house characteristics like age of the dwelling structure or quality and quantity of building appliances. In a next step, the outlined data problems will be handled with support by the data provider. Furthermore, the regression analyses (with a new sample) will be augmented by other statistical methods. Further, the set of involved variables will be extended, e.g. by owner characteristics that shall be found in surveys of ImmoScout users. The study, as the research progresses, will analyze transactions of owner-occupied residential properties in rural, urbanized and metropolitan areas. Additionally, the study contributes to the price and worth theory and to the valuation practice of residential properties. Furthermore, new scientific insights into the research field ìlist pricesî are expected.

The aim of this paper is to analyze the types of financial assets and derivatives that are necessary to provide an adequate financing for real estate investments, and, at the same time, to control their risk. We begin with a theoretical analysis, and, next, we compare the conclusions we draw from it with the financial assets available in the United States and the European Union before and after the 2008 crisis. The central features of an adequate financing are summarized in: a) A fair distribution of the investment risk premium among the financing sources according to the risk they assume, b) A temporal matching between the expected investment income and financial payments. Furthermore, in a well functioning market of real estate financing, derivatives should play a crucial role in bringing the opportunity to hedge risk, and, thus, in trading and pricing it. Trading risk is crucial in order to build up an efficient market, i.e. a market the prices of which systematically approach values. To sum up, this paper aims to answer four questions: Which assets are necessary in order to finance properly real estate investments? Which derivatives should be available in order to trade the risk of real estate? Which of these assets can we find in the financial systems of United States and the European Union? Has the financial crisis of 2008 modified the set of financial instruments for real estate?

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the factor structure of the real estate forward curve dynamics. Four years of price data on the UK Investment Property Databank (IPD) Total Return Swap All Property are analyzed. The choice of the UK market is justified by the fact that this market is the most mature all over the world. The forward curves are derived using a bootstrap method; a seasonal Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is used to reveal their volatility structure. Dynamics of the forward curve are important for practitioners pricing and hedging derivatives contracts. The factor structure, in real estate forward curves, is more complex than found in many other studies relative to commodities, securities or bonds. Possible reasons for this phenomenon are discussed.

Over the last decade, the Middle East real estate industry has gone through a huge boom followed by a precipitous dip. This paper focuses on the challenges faced and responses by middle-eastern real estate companies in strategically adapting to these changes. Externally the market conditions have changed drastically. As the market has moved from a demand exceeding supply condition to the reverse, several shifts have occurred: 1) from investor driven to end-user driven activity; 2) from speculative buying to purchasing completed property; 3) from an off-plan sales model to a long term model with secure cash flows; 4) from high-end housing and premium retail/commercial property to middle income/affordable housing and middle market retail/commercial property. The resulting internal shift in the emphasis within these organizations is from pure development to asset management. This involves a change in the way construction projects are being completed along with providing quality customer services. As a result, the need to shift the strategy and operating models, as well as the mind-set of these organizations has become apparent. This paper analyses how organizations are coping up with these challenges, highlights weaknesses in the current strategic actions, and proposes a more robust approach to overcome the challenges with a strong rationale and practical case studies to support the arguments.

The authors (University of Warmia - Mazury in Olsztyn) have been specializing in real estate market research (REM) and its specificity for many years. The real estate market, although is informal, facilitates real estate transactions, and allows operators who are also participants of market game to read the signals of the transactions. Phenomens occurring on the property market are dynamic - are also subject of constant change and fluctuation. There are many difficulties in this market which not always are reasonable and ensued from rational circumstances. RN participants often take irrational decisions based on fragmentary information, data about the market and the objects to be traded. Original team, composed of R. Wisniewski, Renigier - Bi_ozor M., Radzewicz A deals with the analysis of changes in the real estate market and tries to predict the future, according to the theories inspired by science and nature studies.

In recent years, public-private collaboration as well as private co-investments has been intensely promoted in Danish area-based urban regeneration policy and programmes. The paper will discuss to which extent these ambitions have been full-filled, and what has actually attracted private investments to the urban regeneration areas. The paper is based on evaluations of the Danish area-based regeneration programmes, as well as research on private investments in selected urban regeneration areas. Our research shows that area-based urban regeneration in average generates private investments a factor 5 times higher than the public investments in the areas, in terms of urban regeneration subsidies. Private investments, however, might cover different property investment strategies: ÑPassive management_, Ñactive management_ and Ñdevelopment_. We suggest that for the urban regeneration areas, development is more interesting than other types of investment strategies, but our studies shows that this type of investments are generated by efforts from specialised developers. The question is what municipalities can do to attract such developers and investors. Case studies shows that developers have little knowledge about urban regeneration, and that developers own networks are more likely to lead them to the urban regeneration areas, than knowledge of the urban regeneration itself. Compared to international research on private investments in urban re-generation (Adair et al, 2007; Nappi-Choulet, 2006; Guy & Henneberry, 2004), we therefore argue for more focus on the institutional context's role for attracting small-scale investors to the urban regeneration.

Research on how the employees experience open plan offices is vast, but the results are mixed. Many studies find open plan offices to support communication, while others mainly recognise problems, such as noise and lack of concentration. Open plan offices have been studied among employees with various tasks and job descriptions. However, many of these employees have at some point in time gone through the change from a private office to open plan. It can only be assumed that previous experiences, and the way a new office solution was introduced, will influence employee opinions about open plan solutions. Therefore, the question is raised about how younger employees, who have never experienced anything but an open plan solution, experience their office environment. Do they perceive the usual problems that are often connected to open plan offices, such as noise, lack of privacy, and interruptions, as problematic as their older colleagues? This article aims at understanding how the youngest generation at work perceives problems that are linked to open plan offices. The article looks at one specific type of job and one group of office employees: generation Y ñ those born in 1980ís and early 1990ís ñ working in a contact centre environment. The research was done as a case study. In total 20 thematic interviews were carried out among the representatives from generation Y from three different sites of one big Finnish telecommunications company. The themes of the interviews were outlined by a thorough literature review concerning problems that are often linked to open office solutions. The findings suggest that the generation Y employees, in fact, liked their open plan office. They acknowledged most of the issues or ìproblemsî that the literature suggests, but they did not necessarily see these in a negative manner. Instead, they often perceived these issues as fair trade-offs for some greater good. This result also supports the idea that open plan offices are complex and interrelated systems where all parts affect the others. Investigating only a part of the system, for example privacy, might give a distorted picture of the entity. The main limitation of this research is the small sample size, which should be taken into consideration when generalising the results. The findings do, however, add to the understanding about how generation Y perceives their work environment. They are the future users of the work environments and, thus, it is important to understand how they perceive different office solutions.

Netherlands has set national energy targets for year 2020 following the European Union vision. In this context at the local level Eindhoven Municipality has set its ambition to go energy neutral in housing sector by 2020 and decided to develop new energy neutral housing areas. Lack of strict regulations and appropriate forms of support aimed at relevant stakeholders involved has attributed to the lack of acceptance for energy neutral housing in the current housing market. Further lack of a defined role for municipality to promote stakeholder participation has affected the realization of energy neutral housing developments. Market research shows that Denmark and UK have introduced several effective regulatory and support instruments to promote their energy ambitions in housing sector. Especially, Danish municipalities have played a unique role to promote stakeholder participation in energy efficient housing developments. These instruments found from Denmark and UK experiences are prioritized for Eindhoven scenario by stakeholder groups of Municipality, project developers, Energy consultants and consumers regarding their preferences using Analytical Hierarchy Process. Using scenario analysis a proactive participatory role is found essential for the Eindhoven municipality to promote stakeholder participation in energy neutral housing development process.

This paper builds upon previous research that investigated the critical factors and essential elements for professionally accredited real estate degree programmes at undergraduate and postgraduate levels in the UK (Poon, Hoxley and Fuchs). The aim of this paper is to compare and contrast the perspective of human resource (HR) professionals with other stakeholders and to identify preferred knowledge, skills and attributes. The previous research targeted real estate professionals (employers) and recent real estate graduates (new entrants) by way of questionnaire survey. The survey enabled a detailed analysis of the knowledge, skills and attributes that employers required and a comparison with those that recent real graduates considered they had gained from their programme of study. The survey results were complemented by detailed interviews undertaken with a small number of course directors of Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) accredited programmes delivered by UK universities. One of the interesting comparisons illustrated by the survey data was the relevant weighting given to the importance of technical knowledge compared with ësofterí skills and attributes such as communication, time management, negotiation skills, interpersonal skills, and adaptability and flexibility. This aspect has been investigated further by undertaking a series of detailed interviews with HR professionals working for leading real estate consultancies in London. Initial results, perhaps not surprisingly, suggest that HR professionals attach greater weight to ësofterí skills and attributes than either employers or recent graduates. The perspectives of HR professionals are of significance for new entrants to the real estate profession. They are important gatekeepers in designing and implementing selection processes and in providing graduate surveyors with appropriate in-house support and training to successfully proceed to full professional membership. The interviews also provide further illumination to the on-going debate about whether undergraduates who have completed a dedicated professional degree or non-cognate postgraduates are most suitability equipped to secure employment in the current extremely competitive market for new entrants to the profession.

A green agenda turned into a growing subject throughout an increasing number of European listed real estate companies over the last decade. However, the focus on sustainability is probably not only goodwill or partly legislation driven, instead moreover a benefit driven action to achieve a financial surplus. Following the guidelines of the European Public Real Estate Association and the Global Reporting Initiative we identified the key factors which should be included into a real estate green agenda. The investigation of European listed real estate companies in accordance with the key factors enables us to classify firms across different levels of Sustainability intensity. Additionally, we extracted the financial performance of the categorised firms in order to examine the benefits of a green agenda. After controlling for all other factors we applied a panel analysis to quantify the impact of a high qualitative green agenda and tried to illustrate the possible linkage between green commitments and its financial impact.

Green attributes of the occupied building seem to have a growing importance for the real estate occupiers. In this study the situation in the Helsinki Metropolitan area was researched by a questionnaire conducted in 2009. 90 responses were taken into a detailed analysis representing micro and large companies, local and global companies and different branch of industries including public sector. The results show that globally operating companies appreciate environmental attributes on a higher level than nationally operating companies. There are differences between the sizes of the companies as well. Middle-sized companies do not value the environmental attributes as high as smaller or larger ones. Also the existence of facility strategy clearly indicates the growing importance of environmental attributes. The differences between various lines of industry somewhat strengthens the earlier results, e.g. stating that the energy and industry branches emphasize the environmental aspects in their office premises as well. The differences were identified also in relation to the position of the respondents. CEOs least appreciated the environmental attributes, while e.g. real estate managers saw them to have generally greater importance. When considering single attributes, location achieved the highest importance, even though it was asked only in terms of environmental sense. The importance of energy efficiency of a building was ranked second, although environmental building certificates were valued the least important attribute. Since sustainability issues are mostly covered in the newer buildings in Finland it may be hard to see the value added by the certificates. The results suggest several topics for the future research, e.g. a research on location preferences in an environmental context. It would be useful to have a deeper understanding of the main phrase of real estate business: ìlocation, location, locationî. Does it cover ñ in these days - the environmental considerations or are they still excluded?

Historic designation is increasingly used as a means to achieve both preservation and community economic development. This study considered the effects of historic designation on residential property values in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Our results support the well-established notion in urban economics literature that historic preservation generally has a positive impact on property values and, in particular, that the historic designation is associated with average property value increases ranging between 5% and 8% of mean house value. Furthermore, designation of a neighborhood as historic has positive spillover effects on property values for nearby residential properties. This finding supports using historic preservation and the designation of historic districts and landmarks as a policy tool for elected and community leaders seeking to find ways to protect and enhance residential property values in central cities. However, appreciation of property values may displace less-affluent residents of historic districts after designation takes place. It must indeed be recognized that with increasing values comes the very real possibility that displacement of neighborhood residents can occur. Our results also show that the lower-end properties gain the most value from historic preservation. Thus historic preservation policies should be accompanied by efforts to retain affordable housing.

Article has an aim to investigate the effects of macroeconomic indicators such as population, income levels, GDP, housing stock, interest rate and rent levels on house prices. Analysis is done by applying panel data methodology on regional data for major cities in Germany and Sweden and by using yearly observations from 1995 to 2009. Results confirm that population, GDP, income, housing stock, interest rate and price levels for other market segments have effects on housing prices. However, these effects can be different for certain indicators depending on market segment and model used.

House price forecasts are important for several parties. For example, (potential) owner-occupiers want to know whether or not it is a good time to buy or sell a home, and decisions of policy makers and commercial parties may depend on house price expectations. In this paper we are not primarily interested in point estimates, but the focus lies on the distribution of the forecasts. House prices depend on other variables, like interest rates, income, wealth, construction costs, number of households and houses, so forecasts of house prices will depend on forecasts of these variables. For that reason we model the relation between these variables, using a time series of monthly price indices in the Netherlands from January 1974 to December 2010. Some explanatory variables are available on a yearly basis, others on a quarterly or monthly basis. We use two different modeling approaches. The first is an error-correction model, in which a distinction is made between the long and the short-term price developments. The long-term price development depends on the levels of the variables, such as the height of the income and the interest rate. This long-term equation defines for each period an equilibrium price. If the actual price is above the equilibrium price, there is talk of overvaluation. In the short-term equation price changes are explained from previous price changes, changes in the explanatory variables and the deviation between the actual price and the equilibrium price in the previous period. In the second approach we use frequency domain techniques to bring all horizons, observation frequencies and variables together. All time series are decomposed into several components, such as long term and short term, using filtering techniques. The filtered components have zero correlation and fully add up to the original series. Spectral analysis techniques can be used to determine the optimal frequency decomposition. All aspects of the time series behavior can be modeled correctly simultaneously due to separate modeling of the various components. Because the correlations between the components are zero, separate models for the various components can be devised. In the end the results from the component models can then be brought together again. Both models are used to estimate the historical time series, and based on these estimates scenarios of house prices and the corresponding explanatory variables are made. The scenario results from both models are compared.

Household size has decreased considerably over time. We use a theoretical model for investigating the relationship between household size and the size and internal structure of a city. In a stylized model, single-person households occupy in equilibrium the central parts of the city, while two-person households live in the less central parts. Differences in incomes and costs of transportation drive the results. Using a numerical example we find that a city with an exogenous population shrinks in geographical extension if the share of single-person households increases. The theoretical results are confirmed by data from two selected cities.

Property developers in the Netherlands are responsible for 83% of de housing production in the profit and non-profit sector. At this moment the housing shortage is neutralized but there is still a quality mismatch between demand and supply on the Dutch housing market. In recent years, a new organizer of housing projects is becoming more popular within the development sector, the end users of the houses themselves. The Dutch government has taken initiative to expand housing production commissioned by individuals over the last five years by 30% of the housing production. A special form of private commissioned housing is collectively commissioned housing. This creates benefits on several levels. It has a positive effect on the social cohesion of the neighborhood and it contributes to the livability. Building houses for themselves individuals and groups are closely involved with the building process and by offering them the possibility to walk through the process and to let them make their own choices they can develop a house that perfectly fits their needs. Individual or collectively commissioned housing can be defined more closely by ëCommissioning through which consumers or a group of consumers, organized as an entity without a profit motive, have the whole legal control and bear the responsibility for the use of ground, the design and construction of the houseí. This research discusses individual and collectively commissioning of housing in the Netherlands. In the survey specific factors and the degree of say the individual commissioners wants were questioned.

The authors employ a structural time series modelling approach to investigate the presence and significance of unobserved components within the Australian housing finance data. More precisely, the objectives of the paper are to: (i) establish whether or not the cyclical and seasonal variations exist; and (ii) whether seasonality, if present, is stochastic or deterministic. In doing so, the authors deviate from conventional regression analysis by employing a state space smoothing algorithm to extract these unobserved components allowing them to test for the presence of stochastic versus deterministic seasonal and cyclical components. The results of the empirical analysis confirm presence of the end of financial year seasonal effect. The value of transactions and hence demand for housing finance is greatest during the end of financial year season. The paper also points to some suggestions for future research.

During the last decades the housing market has shift from a supply driven to a demand oriented market. Therefore, the choice for dwelling seekers is extended and housing allocation systems are reorganized. In practice however there are many bottlenecks in the housing market. The dynamics of moving up, within or between the housing sectors is limited and the entry options for starters are small. This paper analyses the dynamics of the rental housing market in the region of Eindhoven. In this region the housing allocation system is readjusted to enlarge the choice of the dwelling seeker. The system is deregulated and in a part of the rental market dwellings are assigned by lot. This paper is based on an evaluation of this selection by drawing lots from the start of the housing allocation system (September 2007) until January 2010. Firstly, we explore the main characteristics of the housing market in the region of Eindhoven. Secondly, we explain the reorganization of the allocation policy in the rental market. Thirdly, we go into the research method and the data-mining process. Only the active dwelling seekers (those who searched for a dwelling during the past year) were taken into account. All active dwelling seekers (13,264) were approached to take part in an internet survey, 3,780 actually did. Next we will present the outcome of the research for several types of households and dwellings. The paper ends with a discussion on efficiency and justice for the several types of dwelling seekers and we will do some suggestions for improvement.

It has been observed that Turkish policy makers have experimented and applied a wide spectrum of housing policies since the foundation of the Republic. With the turn of the Century, a sharp change in the housing policies started to take place, thanks to the relatively stable macro-economic conditions in Turkey. In this context, it appears that urban renewal is turning into one of the significant models to raise new dwellings particularly in the central areas as well as the peripheries of the major cities. In the past decade, it appeared that urban renewal projects were subject to numerous criticisms by means of public benefit, financial modeling (like PPP) and social concerns. In this paper, in a broader perspective, the authors question whether housing provision arising from the urban renewal projects is adequate to meet housing needs of the lower income groups and the urban poor. The authors also argue that although urban renewal projects play a pivotal role in the transformation of the squatter settlements in the major cities of Turkey, there are vibrant oppositions against the current renewal practices. Therefore, to determine pros and cons of the urban renewal schemes in Turkey, this paper specifically focuses on the Do?anbey/Bursa Urban Renewal Project - a 3,000-unit project right in the downtown Bursa, besides a brief of other selected projects. It also assesses, specifically in the case of Turkish experience, the financial, political, legal, technical, environmental and socio-economic dimensions of urban renewal projects as a whole. This paper contributes in two different aspects. Firstly, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to analyze Do?anbey/Bursa Urban Renewal Project particularly in the context of suggested urban renewal performance criteria along with the regional housing policies. Secondly, taking into account both the existing urban renewal literature and the leading housing renewal cases in Turkey, with Do?anbey project, we propose a performance criteria (rating methodology) to evaluate how doable a prospective urban renewal project might be. The suggested model will help perform a cost-benefit analysis and hence rate a specific renewal project based on categorical classification of its defined features. We believe that this value added methodology will help both policy makers and market players to analyze social and economic feasibility of the potential urban renewal projects before actually starting them up.

Housing is principal thing to ensure the basic need of society. The issue of low cost housing has been the focus of much attention from every country in the world. Since Malaysia and Indonesia recognized as developing country which also emphasize on programme of housing for the poor, therefore the study on how these two countries applied this concept need to be discovered. Comparison on policy and housing scheme will be applied in order to find out low cost housing programme carried out for both countries. This paper seeks to uncover the issue of low cost housing within Malaysia and Indonesia. Accordingly, the paper attempts to focus on the implementation of housing programme for the poor in both countries. It will contribute to the development of housing programme for developing country and in turn to benefit to the society.

We investigate the role of a real estate market in consumption based asset pricing models. A long-standing issue in this context is the inability of these models to match the equity premium observed in the data. Piazzesi, Schneider, and Tuzel (2007) use a model with housing services that comes closer to matching the premium. We look at the performance of this model from a different perspective. Rather than focusing on the model implied returns, we use historical returns to construct the Hansen-Jagannathan volatility bounds for the inter-temporal rate of substitution (a stochastic discount factor). Our returns include real estate returns in addition to the typically included returns on stocks and a risk-free asset. Then we calculate moments of a stochastic discount factor implied by the model from Piazzesi, Schneider, and Tuzel (2007). These moments are shown to be above the Hansen-Jagannathan volatility bounds.

For a long time, Facilities Management has been marginalized in the realm of management. With the enlargement of the scope of Facilities Management and the emphasis of its strategic influence on business, there has been increasing concern on the social context of Facilities Management. Outsourcing, as a management method, is commonly practiced in this area. It has been demonstrated in relative studies that collaborative outsourcing relationships lead to outsourcing success. This paper will shed light on outsourcing relationships between clients and suppliers of Facilities Management services from a social interaction perspective. It aims to explore the factors that affect outsourcing relationships on an interactive level and their manifestation in the outsourcing process. A generic model of outsourcing success will be developed based on a thorough review of the relevant literature. Case studies will be conducted in order to illustrate the model and to explore further findings.

In the economic research market transparency is the knowledge about goods, their prices and their allocation. Competitive market transparency requires a competitive market. Unfortunately, caused by heterogeneous and immovable real estate the land and real estate market isnít a competitive market. Nevertheless, improvement of market transparency is a major goal of market research. The land and real estate market is divided spatially and factually. This paper will present empirical and theoretical efforts to improve transparency of the land and real estate market. It presents the preliminary results of a research project started in 2007. While the final report of the research project deals with empirical aspects, the doctoral thesis deals with a theoretical model to improve market transparency. Requirements to improve transparency of the land and real estate market can be derived by an em-pirical study of current situation. Therefore, four issues have been analyzed. To begin with, market information that is currently published on a national level has been analyzed. Market information could be grouped by publisher and characterized by content: Different publishers focus on different aspects. For the second place, published information from different countries has been compared internationally. Different countries have different legal and economic frameworks. To fit require-ments of users both frameworks should be considered within a comparison of market information and market transparency. For the third place, market participants have been asked for their demand for market information. For the fourth place, scientific and practical papers point out aspects of mar-ket transparency or demand for market information of market participants. All issues were combined to a system to improve nowadays markets transparency. The idea of the empirical study is to identify very important factors (key factor) to describe the land and real estate market. Another effort is deriving key factors theoretically. It can be done by comparing different suggestions written in literature or by modeling the demand for market information used in different services. However, different services like valuation, market and location analyses or forecasting - each sup-porting transparency ñ require different parameters. These services can be formed to a model of market transparency. This model allows considering all aspects of market transparency. The parame-ters of different services are combined in the doctoral thesis. The weights of different parameters are estimated by using Multi-Criteria Decision Making. Due to quantitative parameter the decisional problem is fuzzy. The doctoral thesis will handle these problems by using methods like PROMETHEE, ELECTRE and AHP. Various benefits of these methods are going to be connected. The theoretical model results a set of key factors. The key factors derived in the empirical study are going to be tested practically. The results of the doctoral thesis are going to be compared with the results of the empirical study and the statements of market participants derived in the survey. Although the research is located in Germany, ideas and results could be transferred into other countries.

Boom-bust cycles have characterized real estate for a long time and a majority of depressions have closely followed cycle peaks. To many, these cycles are like the common cold, something that canít be cured but we eventually get over. But when asset values decline too much or too long (as we have seen worldwide), then exceptional and sometimes disagreeable measures are taken to return to the path of sustainable development - and they are not always successful. While real estate thought has not adequately addressed this problem, as a scientific discipline, it is barely beyond infancy. Even though it may not yet grasp the varied complexity of built assets and their impact, no other discipline has the potential to deliver the interdisciplinary research that could get to the dark heart of this problem leading to a breakthrough. From a perspective on globalism, this talk sketches a path for moving ahead with examples from other disciplines that have made similar breakthroughs.

The added value of corporate real estate and facilities management has gained a lot of attention during the past years. However, the actual value creation has received less attention. In this paper the aim is to increase the understanding of value creation in real estate business and reflect the current approach against lean theory. Design/methodology/approach ñ Due to the descriptive nature of the research, a FM case of energy management service was selected to illustrate the value creation. Findings ñ The value creation process and the underlying practices illustrate how the value is currently created for the end-customer in the case. The results indicate that the service process is not built around the value creation, but for example to control the work of others or to follow the service contract. The service process is also interrupted for several reasons such as poor resource allocation, overload of work, and lack of knowledge to maintain information. To overcome the challenges, more attention should be aimed on value creation and its improvement. Research limitations ñ More case studies applying the same research context as used in this paper should be conducted to increase the validity of the results. Practical implications ñ The techniques, methods and elements of value creation theory can be used by organisations in real estate business to gain better understanding on their own value creation processes. Originality/value ñ This paper offers a first insight into the value creation theories of lean in real estate business.

The starting point for this paper is a number of barriers that hinder profitable energy efficiency investments being conducted i.e. ìthe energy paradoxî). Examples are asymmetric information, split incentives, and transaction cost. One way to reduce these barriers are ìgreenî lease and the idea behind this is presented in the paper as well as examples from different countries. The paper then presents a case study about the introduction of green leases in a large office property in Sweden in order to reduce split incentives in a complex organisation structure. The situation concerns an international investor, a property manager and tenant, which is a common situation but seldom discussed in the literature. The process used and the resulting contract developed in this project could be used to solve similar situations in other regions/countries.

Flood risks are forecast to rise significantly across many parts of Europe, USA, and Asia. As the climate warms, sea levels will continue to rise and the water holding capacity of the atmosphere will increase exponentially. At the same time, the cost of building flood barriers will increase disproportionately with every additional centimetre of height. For many countries, these flood risks will be highly localised, however, and with strong spatial spillovers. This paper uses a unique dataset for 5 boroughs in London to develop a spatial econometric simulation model of the impacts of current and future flood risks on house prices and the location of employment. We consider the broader socio-economic implications of our results.

The key to sustainable urban regeneration is to make Europeís cities attractive and safe places to live. With this respect, long-term investments and planning are required in decaying urban areas. The European Union and single European countries have shown a growing interest in neighbourhood regeneration as actually proved by the funds allocated to promote integrated strategies. To enhance liveability in post-war deteriorated neighbourhoods, combined approaches directed to both buildings and open spaces appear to be important like also suggested within the debate on the failures of Modern design principles. Many of those urban areas, in fact, present similarities in decay problems. This is true also for Italian late post-war suburbs. In this context: what initiatives on social and environmental level may lead to improved liveability in European good practices? What funding appear relevant to feasible strategies? We try to address the mentioned questions within a broader research program at the IUAV University of Venice financed by the Italian Government. The purpose of this research is to identify elements leading to good practice in neighbourhood regeneration and experiment them in real contexts in Italy in order to identity key elements for success on European level. After an introduction to the research background and the Italian situation, we here provide an overview on some significant examples of regeneration in Europe dealing with housing estates and public spaces. Based on qualitative approach we draw some preliminary conclusions and identify directions for further investigations.

The paper at hand analyzes the remuneration structure of Real Estate Asset Management services for Institutional Investors in Germany, both theoretically and empirically. Based on the Principal-Agent Theory as part of the new institutional economics, an adequate incentive and remuneration structure is ñ among others ñ a possibility to reduce conflicts between an Institutional Investor (Principal) and an ñ internal or external ñ Real Estate Asset Management (Agent). This could result in an alignment of interests between the two parties and a reduction of opportunistic behavior of the Real Estate Asset Management unit. Consequently a variable, performance-based remuneration system reflects the interests of the Institutional Investor and the Real Estate Asset Management, as the total income for the Real Estate Asset Management increases or decreases with its performance, meaning the performance of real estate values. Within the conducted theoretical analyses, 36 key variables for Real Estate Asset Management services are distracted from literature and classified afterwards based on the areas of strategy, transaction management, object management and controlling. Secondly, the optimal remuneration/ incentive structure for Real Estate Asset Management services are analyzed and different possibilities are shown. In a further step, these findings are analyzed empirically within a study focusing on the 36 key-variables for Real Estate Asset Management services. Within this empirical part, the research project focuses on life insurance companies, pension funds/ staff pension funds and pension schemes of the liberal professions for members of professional associations, that own direct real estate valued at more than Ä 26,5 bn (book-value) in total in 2009 and plan ñ as recent surveys confirmed ñ to further increase investments in real estate as real estate. Therefore, a questionnaire with 15 questions and several sub-questions was sent to all institutions and associations registered in Germany. The questionnaire was split up into 5 parts focusing on different areas of Real Estate Asset Management e.g. general information about the investments in real estate, general insights in the Real Estate Asset Management and remuneration/ incentive structures for Real Estate Asset Management tasks. In total, 37% of the relevant institutions answered the questionnaire. They were grouped into 3 different clusters based on the WARD-method (hierarchical method) and the k-means-method (iterative method) for cluster analyses. Using these three clusters, the remuneration structures for Real Estate Asset Management services were analyzed. It can be observed that ñ in general ñ a variable, performance based remuneration structure is not seen as a major criteria for an alignment of interest between the Institutional Investor and the Real Estate Asset Management. But, in the three different groups, different attitudes towards a performance based remuneration structure can clearly be observed. Furthermore, for some selected services, a variable remuneration structure is dominantly preferred.

This article chronicles the past, present, and future of the American Real Estate Society (ARES). The primary mission of ARES is to be the leading real estate research and education organization globally that influences real estate thought leadership and decision making. To accomplish this mission, the entrepreneurial leadership of ARES developed six real estate journals, a special topics monograph series, an extensive newsletter, and an Annual Meeting that now features over 200 research paper presentations, 18 panel sessions, a Doctoral Seminar, and an all-day ëëCritical Issues Seminaríí that is jointly organized and sponsored by major industry trade associations. ARES has over 1,400 members and is managed by an allvolunteer team of 15 officers, 20 directors, 25 appointed position holders, 3 international board representatives, and 14 committees. It is financially supported by regular member dues, industry contributions for premium memberships and journal underwriting, and a Foundation that has over eighty ëëfellowsíí that contribute annually to support various special ARES activities. The organization has been instrumental in originating and developing seven other regional real estate ëësisteríí societies throughout the world, a job opportunity website for members and students, and an Education Tract that focuses on the development of best practices in real estate education throughout academia and industry. Excellence in research, education, and ARES service is recognized annually through many awards and prizes announced at its Annual Meeting.

Over recent years within developed countries, and notably US, Australia and UK, there has been a significant uptake in the production and use of voluntary building certification schemes which provide perspective investors and tenants with information about the construction and expected performance of commercial buildings measuring against a range of (mainly environmental) sustainability criteria. Malaysia has also launched its own Green Building Index (GBI) customised to suit the tropical climate and current state of development. Numbers of studies (Gowri, 2004; JLL, 2008 and Reed et al, 2009) have been carried out comparing the characteristics of the various rating tools and their economic value (See for example Eichholtz, Kok, & Quigley, 2009), but there has been very little research which addresses the key practical considerations which may be of critical importance moving forward, namely in relation to the voluntary nature of the certificate, monitoring of actual against expected building performance and a lack of monitoring of adherence to the standard during the building life.The use of certification is also spreading in developing countries and some of these are demonstrating cognisance of the take up and monitoring issues. Singapore has introduced mandatory labelling whilst Malaysia has introduced reassessment in its rating tools (Green Building Index) making it not a ëone-offí award; it is life limited and subject to monitoring. Malaysia is also debating the possibility of making the certification mandatory. Recent research conducted by Mohd Aini (2010) reveals that Malaysian property investors who pursue responsible property investment (RPI) principles may place greater significance on the certification of a building than do investors from the wider international community. This paper explores, through literature and an ongoing research project, why this seemingly greater reliance may be occurring and explores whether the introduction of monitoring and the need for renewal of the certification may be important factors in providing investors with greater assurance that highly rated buildings do indeed satisfy their sustainability aspirations. It concludes that, moving forward, a certificate scheme that does not include monitoring and renewal provisions, may not meet the needs of ever increasingly discerning investors. Key ReferencesEichholtz, P., Kok, N., & Quigley, J. M. (2009). Doing Well By Doing Good: An Analysis of the financial performances of Green Office Buildings. Royal Institution of Surveyors, RICS.Gowri, K. (2004). Green building rating systems: An overview. ASHRAE Journal , 46 (11).Jones Lang LaSalle. (2008). Green Building Rating Systems : Going beyond the labels - October 2008. London: Jones Lang LaSalle.Mohd Aini, A. (2010) Sustainable and Responsible property investment in Malaysia :Summary Findings from Delphi Round 1. Available at http://sites.google.com/site/srpimalaysia.Reed, R., Bilos, A., Wilkinson, S., & Schulte, K. (2009). International comparison of sustainable rating tools. Journal of Sustainable Real Estate , 1 (1), pp.1-22.

Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) of equity securities often exhibit under-pricing; i.e. common stock values tend to rise significantly from the offer price on the first day of trading. The evidence for Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) IPOs is less consistent. However, most studies are concentrated in the mature REIT markets such as the US, UK and Australia. The present study examines the IPOs in a much smaller and immature REIT market; Turkey.

Public Private Partnerships have made a substantive contribution to the upgrade in infrastructure quality around the world enhancing resident quality of life and supporting economic development. The rollout of the PPP model has not met with universal approval however; indeed in some countries there has been strong resistance to PPPs with misgivings centered on the level of private sector profiteering as well as the long-term obligations placed on the tax-payer. The scale of the infrastructural investment challenge will nonetheless necessitate greater collaboration between the public and private sectors going forward if the infrastructural investment gap is to be addressed. As economies around the world begin the process of transition between recession and recovery it is imperative that key stakeholder groupings work together to formulate long-term infrastructural objectives, create efficient and transparent implementation and operational strategies as well as conceptualising and developing innovative investment models. This paper examines the case for and against the continued expansion of PPPs as a conduit for private sector investment in essential infrastructural provision. The paper reflects the views and opinions of key stakeholder groupings across five PPP markets namely, Australia, Canada, India the US and the UK. The rationale was to reflect the experiences and challenges across jurisdictions at different stages in the PPP maturity cycle. To facilitate comparability, statistics used in the quantitative evaluation are drawn from the Infrastructure Journal (IJ) online database.

This paper aims to evaluate the perception of Malaysian facilities management (FM) stakeholders on the importance of innovation in the delivery of FM services. This research adopts an extensive literature review on innovation in the generic business environment and adapts the findings to the FM industry. A large-scale survey with relevant FM stakeholders is conducted and statistically analysed to determine the role of innovation management in delivering FM services within the Malaysian FM industry. The Malaysian FM stakeholderís acknowledged the importance of innovation in delivering effective FM services. The ability of FM service providers and suppliers to demonstrate an innovative approach is also a significant factor in order to win work. The fact that FM in Malaysia is still in its infancy hinders the authors from justifying a truly relevant population of FM stakeholders in Malaysia. Nevertheless, the number of respondents from the survey are considered to be prominent FM stakeholders in the local market since the data were collected from participants who attended the National Asset and Facilities Management Convention (NAFAM) in 2010. There is also limited literature available on the current position of FM in Malaysia. This paper provides a fresh paradigm in understanding the importance of innovation in delivering effective FM services in Malaysia. The Malaysian FM stakeholdersí expectations from their FM service providers are also translated and ranked into types of innovation that is instrumental in the eye of the FM customers. The growth of FM customer-supplier relationship is shifting from being merely on a transactional basis to a strategic partnering relationship by embracing innovation principles in delivering FM services respectively. Literature on FM within the Malaysian perspective is still fairly limited, to which this paper aims to enhance this existing body of knowledge. The input provided by this study will guide the effective implementation of innovation in the delivery of FM services in this emerging Asian market.

The authors aim to extend previous literature on variations in returns across local office markets by examining the linkage of office market dynamics (viz. dynamics in stock, vacancy and direct and indirect returns) at the European Metropolitan level to the institutional structure of local markets. Previous literature suggests that return rates differ widely across local office markets, substantiating the view that returns are intertwined with conditions at the local level. Whether and to what degree differences in local markets relate to differences in institutions has not been addressed. This is the central issue of this research proposed. The research design consists of three coherent steps to address the central issue. Step 1 addresses the issue of how institutions may determine differences in office market dynamics. The literature on institutions and regulations is vast, however typically addressing housing market institutions. Yet, this literature forms a relevant source to draw on when considering how institutions and office market behaviour are intertwined. We use current contributions in the literature, culminating in a concise review of the literature on institutions and office market behaviour. Step 2 aims to measure the degree of differences in office market returns. We use a cross-country approach to first determine the degree of differences in local markets both within and between countries. This enables us to determine whether within or between country conditions dominate. For this we use data across European Metropolitan areas. We model local behaviour as relating to fundamental economic and social conditions identified in step 1. Step 3 considers the interrelations between office market dynamics and institutions to explain the observed differences in step 2. For this we model a dynamic panel error correction model, now including the various institutional measures identified in step 1. These results will indicate which and to what degree the various institutional measures explain observed differences in local office dynamics.

Over the past couple of decades a behavioural real estate research paradigm has been developing. In this paper, observed aggregate behaviour within the institutional real estate investment community is analysed and related to economic assumptions underpinning investment theory and market functionality. Evidence is found to challenge economic rationality in investor decision-making. Cyclicality is identified in the interactions between the investment and development markets, which results in the lack of high quality property investment across geographically diverse regions lamented by economic development authorities. Some consequences for ëregionalí economic development are explored.

The purpose of the paper is to review and evaluate efforts to integrate research into teaching in a postgraduate degree program in real estate management at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. The majority of the students in the program come from European countries, but a significant minority is from Asia. The long term goals of the changes were to increase graduation rates as well as the quality of dissertations. In order to validate our findings, the data for this paper emanate from a number of different sources, such as studentsí course evaluations, studentsí grades as well as interviews with students. The results show that the first cohort of students found it stressful when individual research writing was introduced towards the end of their studies, since they had very little practice and experience in research writing. With a more gradual and earlier introduction in teams, coupled with changes in assessment tasks, the second cohort found individual research writing less stressful and more beneficial. Performance in the second cohort has improved significantly. By creating a more aligned course design, students have spent more time on task, which is the most significant factor in creating a better learning environment.

Trophy or landmark buildings are properties which possess an exclusive market position due to their architecture, size, location, or other criteria. Famous examples are the Chrysler Building in New York City, ìThe Gherkinî in London, and the Sony Center in Berlin. They are very popular investment targets among institutional investors. The reasons for their popularity are not quite clear yet: Undoubtedly landmark buildings command top rents; but due to their extremely high construction costs and purchase prices it is doubtful whether their yields are top as well. And most likely collecting trophy buildings is a matter of prestige; but under the assumption of not completely irrational investor behavior in a not completely inefficient market it is doubtful that such a ìvanity premiumî can outweigh economic disadvantages. Our paper sheds some light on the trophy building puzzle. For this we first defined the term landmark building by assembling some characteristics of well-known properties. In a second step we compared the economic and non-economic decision factors for ordinary and landmark buildings in theory and practice. We used public and private data on a sample of over 20 properties in 7 countries. As benchmarks we used IPD indices and the NCREIF Property Index. In addition we carried out a survey among 84 real estate experts. The main finding of our research is that landmark buildings show a special risk-return-profile which makes them attractive for certain types of investors. Advantages of these properties areóamong othersóa stable market value and a low vacancy risk; disadvantages are the high prices and the small number of potential buyers. Furthermore we found evidence for the prestige motive.

The linkage between corporate commitment to environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues and investment performance has generated a substantial body of research outside the real estate sector. Nevertheless, the relationship between the environmental performance and financial performance of companies is still not well understood as studies have found mixed and contradicting results. Drawing upon the KLD database which contains ratings on seven ESG dimensions from 2003-2009, this paper investigates the relationship between the ESG rating and the financial performance of a sample of US real estate firms. Since the primary transmission channel from ESG activities to financial performance may be better reflected by a firm's intangible assets, we model both Tobin's q and the total annual return in a panel framework with time and sector specific fixed effects. Our results are largely consistent with the existing literature finding a positive relationship between CFP and CSP. Further, the time scale of the lagged effects seems plausible.

This paper provides an analysis of the impact of sustainable principles on corporate property decisions and attractiveness for business districts in the French context. It is based on a behavioural survey conducted across a large sample of corporate property managers and a MCA approach which highlights key factors about the influence of sustainable principles among traditional determinants of territorial attractiveness. This approach allows us to draw up a typology of actors regarding the diffusion of sustainability issues. It emphasizes a general improvement of sustainability on location choice especially for listed companies, owners of their head office and companies located into the main business districts of the Paris metropolitan area.

In the real estate industry much research is being conducted by practitioners and academics in order to develop and manage real estate successfully. Real estate is not a homogeneous phenomenon, as every asset is a composite product on a local market with many stakeholders. How do academics and practitioners in this field deal with all the perspectives and how do they create knowledge on what they find? As we know: science is built up of facts, as a house is built of stones; but an accumulation of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house. This paper explores the possibilities to enhance the value of real estate research and the accumulation of knowledge by using different paradigms. It also addresses the rigour-relevance debate, to whether academic researchers and practitioners can colla¨boratively produce research or can they only irritate each other? Most of the real estate research is using a Positivist Empiricist paradigm. This paradigm is probably widening the rigour-relevance gap, because knowledge is not objective. Knowledge appears to be theory-laden and value-laden. Understanding other paradigms, such as Social Constructionism and Critical Realism can be helpful in understanding to how researchers can view reality and how knowledge can be generated and accumulated about the real estate industry.

In the paper a step-by-step model will be developed that enables the valuation of land- and real estate development projects with multiple embedded real options that are subject to both market risk in the form of fluctuating gross market values, and project specific risk in the form of uncertain outcomes of zoning procedures. The rationale for this model is to be able to explicitly value the flexibility present within projects. The standard NPV approach cannot value this flexibility. The valuation is done from the viewpoint of a land developer who wants to estimate the maximum price for which he can acquire the land, given a known portfolio of options that is available throughout the development process. The real options to defer, abandon, expand or contract and the option to switch are included in this portfolio. The model itself is based on the value creation process in land and real estate development (residual valuation) and is used to value four development scenarios with multiple underlying assets, each with their own option structure and uncertain zoning procedures. The valuation process produces an Expanded NPV of the development project which is by definition the summation of the Static NPV and total Option Value. The Real Options Growth Matrix of Smit and Trigeorgis (2004) is finally used to illustrate the four development scenarios by their Static NPV and total Option Value, providing a benchmark for strategic considerations concerning the management of the future development process. The underlying assets in the model are specified as the gross market value per m≤ net floor area of four possible property types: retail, office, residential and industrial space. Gross market values are based on current property specific market rents and gross initial yields. Using the Marketed Asset Disclaimer assumption of Copeland and Antikarov (2004), the discounted gross market value represents the value ëas ifí the underlying asset were traded on the financial markets. The binomial option pricing framework of Cox, Ross and Rubinstein (1979) is subsequently used to model the market risk of the underlying assets. The fluctuations of the underlying assets are based on a Geometric Brownian Motion process, which is defined by the historical standard deviations of the property specific total returns. The exercise prices represent the land- and development outlays that are necessary to develop the project and follow a deterministic path over time. The sensitivity analysis of the model shows that the options in the portfolio display interesting and significant interaction effects, dependent on their order of valuation and sensitivity to varying levels of volatility, time-to-maturities, moneyness, risk-free interest rates, dividend yields and cross correlations. Overall it can be concluded that the characteristics of financial options are mostly preserved when modeling the development process of real estate as a collection of real options.

Reflective thinking is an education technique that is increasingly recognised as playing a significant role in studentsí academic learning in higher education. Similarly, studentsí approaches to learning are considered as determinant factors in the prediction of student academic performance. While these propositions seem logical as theoretical frameworks for teaching and learning process, they have not been investigated within the real estate discipline. This study explores the relationship between learning approaches, the stages of reflective thinking and academic performance of real estate students. Specifically, the study attempts to explore the causal effects of studentsí learning approaches and reflective thinking on academic performance in property valuation. Biggsí (1987) Study Process Questionnaire (SPQ) and Reflective Thinking Questionnaire (RTQ) developed by Kember et al. (1977; 1991) would be administered to all Real Estate/Estate Management Practice students at each level of study. Their respective academic performance in property valuation would be measured by the studentsí mark in coursework, examination and average of the two pieces of assessment. Two types of analyses (descriptive and linear structural model) would be employed in analysing and presenting data from the survey. The study will conclude with practical implications for real estate education.

The aim of this study is to investigate transmission mechanisms between real estate and financial and monetary spheres. When we look across countries, there appears to be some correlation historically between declines in real estate prices and financial instability. The existing literature on the inter-relationships between real estate markets and monetary transmission mechanisms focuses mainly on the housing market. This paper attempts to address this research gap by incorporating more real estate markets and not focussing exclusively on the residential market. Also, none of the existing studies investigate the joint relationships in terms of linkage and co-movements between a range of financial and monetary policy components and real estate assets at the same time. We associate these sectors together to study the intensity of the linkage between the real estate and financial sectors on one side, and the real estate and monetary sectors on the other side. We then identify which of these sectors affects real estate more significantly and analyse the impact of such relations on economic policy. A structural vector autoregressive (VAR) is applied to study the sensitivity of the real estate markets. This reveals the sensitivity of residential, commercial and securitized real estate markets to macroeconomic and monetary variables and to the financial market. Furthermore, co-movements of these variables are studied through co-spectral analysis.

In turmoil periods, market liquidity can experience sudden dry ups connected with a significant price movements. This unexpected changes in liquidity patterns, often driven by irrational investorsí behaviour,and it is normally defined as Liquidity Black Hole (LBH). So far relevant research in this area explored macro-market level rather than explaining micro-agent decisions. In this study we show - both theoretically and empirically - that the LBH effect at market micro-level is originated by agentsí decisions made at a mutual fund level. We present a model on the behaviour of investors as a function of expected market risks and returns. The causes of a LBH are analyzed and the model is also tested under real case scenario, i.e. UK Real Estate Mutual Fund industry. Price creation is modeled both endogenously and exogenously, and it shows that the relationship between fund flows and expected liquidity risk follows an exponential function. Finally, we demonstrate that areas of absolute LBH exist and cannot be hedged. In those areas neither the available îcash-like cushionî nor the managerial skills of the market maker can avoid the îeconomic failureî of a fund.

Our project deals with the yet unchartered topic ìRelevance of Smartphone applications in the search for real estate in the German-speaking regionî. Market analyses assume rapid growth of the number of augmented reality applications. Hence, it is expected that there will also be an increase in the use of Smartphone applications in the real estate search. Since June 2010 two applications have been on the Austrian Market, of which one supports the Augmented Reality (AR). In both Germany and Switzerland there are numerous applications for real estate search by now. Our project analyses the quantity and structure of real estate search applications in German-speaking regions. Using qualitative methodology, it also provides a methodical comparison of applications available in Austria. The main criteria of product comparison are: operating system, correspondence of available information and real estate on offer, extent of provided information, application usability, the types of real estate on offer. Based on the results of our research, the project covers the structural, technological and user related factors that facilitate or impede dissemination of Smartphone applications for real estate search. Finally, it gives an overview of the market potential of ARapplications for real estate search via Smartphone. The result of the analysis suggests that usage of Smartphone applications depends on hard facts, i.e. predominance of iPhone operating systems iOS, as well as on soft facts, like usability. Currently, only 10% of real estate on offer in the only available application in Austria that supports augmented reality is geo-coded.

This study examines the impact of managerial risk-taking attitudes on firmís debt seniority policies. Following Coles, Daniel and Naveen (2006) we viewed higher value of the sensitivity to stock return volatility in managerial compensation (Vega) as indication of managersí tendency to adopt a riskier policy choice. Using sample of US equity REITs during 2001-2009, we found a positive relation between secured debt ratio and Vega implying that risk-taking managers tend to use more secured debt in their capital structure. There are two plausible explanations for this observation. ìFree cash flow hypothesisî posits that high risk-taking managers use more secured debt with purpose to generate more free cash flow to finance their risky projects. ìContracting cost hypothesisî on the other hand argues that increased secured debt helps attenuate the agency cost between shareholders and creditors arising from higher managerial risk-taking incentives.

Dutch investors have got a great allocation of residential real estate in their (in)direct real estate portfolio. This paper discusses an instrument for risk management in direct residential portfolios which can be used at several management levels. The instrument will give real estate asset managers benchmark information on their exposure to risk and gives them insights on how they could reduce their overall portfolio risk. Currently IPD only measures risk by historic performance for the Dutch residential portfolios and doesnít measure the risk exposure at one point in time. In the past Blundell, Fairchild and Goodchild developed a risk-web for commercial real estate in the UK with 10 risk factors. These risk factors as they are defined in the UK cannot be used for residential real estate in the Netherlands due to differences in lease agreements and part transaction scenarioís. The risk factors within the Dutch residential market are determined by a survey among Dutch real estate researchers. Also a ranking to the factors was added. The factors are compared to the factors identified for commercial real estate in the UK. In addition to the risk web for real estate investors a risk web is developed for social housing associations as well. The previous paper of Blundell et al. showed that the risk factors didnít capture a significant portion of the variance in the returns for the UK funds. This paper tries to identify for one real estate sector (residential) in a smaller geographical area (the Netherlands) if there is a larger portion of the variance in risk and volatility which could be captured.

The affordability of homeownership is frequently discussed among policy and economic decision makers. An owner-occupied house is mostly the largest asset a household invests in and often requires the household to take out a mortgage. High or volatile interest rates can limit the householdsí access to a mortgage or hamper the household to make the interest payments. Therefore, homeownership is often promoted by offering various contract designs that maximize homeownership affordability by loading the interest rate risk on the borrower. In contrast, building societies in Germany guarantee a low mortgage rate during the mortgage life. Even though the system of collective saving for mortgage lending has basically existed for hundreds of years, the first modern building society was created in UK in 1775. Afterwards, the idea of collective building society savings that offer mortgage lending was adapted in other countries; e.g. the USA in 1831 and Australia in 1832. In Germany, the first building society debuted in 1885. Currently, there are 24 building societies in Germany --- 11 are managed by savings banks or cooperative banking institutions and 13 by private banks and insurance companies. Their business model is based on mortgage rates that are uncoupled from the market rate. This allows granting mortgages at low and stable interest rates and thus provides the households with access to a mortgage while minimizing the interest rate risk. The business model of the building societies comes with further advantages for the household as well as the society itself: First, the mortgage can be prepaid at any time without any prepayment costs. Second, the business model involves a saving period. Households that are able to save constantly are prioritized in getting a loan. This means that due to the business model bad risks are screened out and the borrowers in general have positive equity at mortgage origination because the savings are used to pay down a portion of the loan. Third, the building society savers with an income below a certain amount are entitled to government incentives in the form of a housing bonus and in the case of investing the capital accumulation benefits to an employee savings allowance during the saving period, Salaried savers can also use their payments during the saving and repayment period for their government-sponsored retirement plans. Fourth, the savings accumulation period implicates behavioral components so that the building savers are prepared and fiscally disciplined for the repayment period. However, the various options offered to the building society savers like the prepayment option make it difficult for the building societies to predict future cash flows and regulate their interest rate risk. For example, the business model of building societies is especially attractive to households in a high market rate environment. The high market rate limits the access to a mortgage on the capital market and the households benefit most of the low mortgage rate offered by the building societies, which is uncoupled from the market rate. Contrary, in a low market rate environment the households are more likely to afford a mortgage on the capital market. This probably reduces the business of building societies because fewer households ask for mortgages resulting in lower saving rates and higher prepayments. We use a unique panel data set of the Deutsche Bundesbank to empirically examine the impact of market rate risk on the business model of building societies. First, mortgage defaults are expected to be less sensitive to the market rate because the mortgage rate is uncoupled from the market rate and the business model of building societies screens out bad risks. In contrast, mortgage origination and prepayment are expected to be linked to the market rate, since in a low market rate environment the households are more likely to fund their housing investment on the capital market and, vice versa, in a high market rate environment the households are attracted by the low mortgage rate offered by the building society. Last, the exposure of the overall profitability of building societies to market risk is examined. According to Petersen (2009), this research examines different standard error estimating techniques to control for heteroscedasticity of residuals across building societies or across time. The intent is to provide more robust coefficients for the estimation interpretation.

Part of the new guidance requires the valuer to identify the ìcomponentsî of each property in connection with accounting for depreciation and to provide apportionments accordingly. The allocation of the value between land and property has been a requirement for many years. However, now, where there is more than one significant component part of the same asset which has the same useful life and depreciation method, such component parts may be grouped together in determining the depreciation charge. A previous conference paper (ARES 2011) looked at the method of Depreciated Replacement Cost (DRC) and the rules and regulations thereof. Most importantly, it considers the importance of DRC as a method of achieving Market Value. This paper develops that theme and considers the relationship of DRC in deriving Market Value and the degree of uncertainty pertaining to such a valuation.

The aim of this research is to investigate whether intrinsically energy efficient offices in the United Kingdom command a price premium when compared to intrinsically energy inefficient offices that possess otherwise similar characteristics.Since October 2008 the energy efficiency of commercial office space in the United Kingdom has been assessed with Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs). An EPC is an asset rating that shows the intrinsic performance of a building on a scale that ranges from A to G, with A representing the most energy efficient buildings and G representing the most inefficient buildings. EPCs have been introduced as part of the European Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD). They are a requirement when a building is constructed, sold or let.It has often been suggested that there is or should be a pricing impact for energy efficient buildings, whereby the more efficient buildings command a premium compared to those that are energy inefficient, ceteris paribus. But many of the studies that have investigated or reviewed this claim have more often than not relied on anecdotal rather than empirical evidence to support their theories. Over the past few years however a number of studies have found a pricing impact for energy labels and green labels using more robust and larger datasets in the US.This paper looks at the pricing effect of an asset energy rating for a sample of 623 EPC rated office buildings in the UK. These ratings were obtained at the marketing stage of the building. We use information from CoStar UK on 3,456 achieved deals for these buildings as well as a set of building characteristics. Using hedonic regression analysis we investigate whether a pricing differential can be identified depending on the energy rating.Early results indicate that there is a trend towards a higher rent for energy efficiency. It is argued that the premium that an EPC commands could come directly from its use in marketing materials or indirectly from the rating as a potential indicator of building quality.

Changed legislation and the new playing area in the care sector require another view on real estate by institutions in the mental healthcare sector, since they have become responsible for their own real estate portfolios. Healthcare institutions no longer receive compensation for the actual costs for housing, but integral performance funding including an integral housing component. Combined with the change from a central supply-driven sector to a regulated market-driven sector, that causes fluctuations in volume and thus in revenues. Therefore, these institutions must get a grip on their properties, whereby understanding the risks is necessary for success. This paper presents a model that visualises the risks in the current real estate portfolio in order to advise the mental healthcare institutions on risk management in their real estate portfolio and to provide a handle for strategic real estate management. The risk management tool is developed based on the steps of the risk management process according to COSO. Risk-identification and determination of the factors of the risk attitude is being done by analyzing the Political, Economical, Social and demographical and Technological developments combined with an analysis of the market developments in the mental healthcare sector. Qualitative assessment is being done by using the quadrant model to grant a chance, result and amenability leading to the classification in five risk classes: safe, low, middle, high and fatal. The test at an institution for mental health care shows that the tool does have enough power to distinguish the risky properties in the portfolio at a glance.

Real estate market in Montenegro provides a wide scope of the greenfield opportunities. Still it is not a rare case that developers start easily the land acquisition phase while having very high expectations without a thorough analysis and research. This kind of developers do not perceive the full capacity of the acquired land. Therefore, they often want to sell it instead of going further on with the following development phases. Our field of interest is questioning and analyzing the current development process and strategies in Montenegro. This paper explains an approach that helps developers to understand widely all the aspects and the complete potential that a greenfield projects could deliver. This approach has shown the significant increase on the overall project value in numerous cases. It concentrates on creating the flexible project in brief allowing multiple locations and potential to attract new developers. We selected three case studies to illustrate this approach. Montenegrin experience showed us the ways in better understanding how to use this approach for helping developers in faster and more structured way of making the decisions. This paper directs attention on the further research in providing the new tools for developers in Montenegro.

Municipal Development Tax (MDT) has been important in funding municipalitiesí activities. Though initially conceived to anticipate possible negative development externalities, its role in the last 10 to 15 years has been to capture another slice of the foreseen developersí value added. MDT is mostly referred to the physical features and costs of the envisaged development. As the business margins of real estate development undergo a very significant compression, MDF that is calculated on physical grounds and costs and not on real estate value grounds may dissuade developers to act and therefore substantially reduce municipal funding. An overview of MDF across the municipalities of the LMA provides some interesting information on MDF rationales as far as the real estate market is concerned. For this purpose we define MDF and segment the universe of developments for comparison effects, giving a primordial role to real estate developments on previous urban land (as the latter is associated to the widely consensual strategic aim of confining urban sprawl and re-using the existent city). The survey shows that municipalities do not take into account real estate expectations as far as the rationale for MDT is concerned. That points at the need for a deeper real estate culture in municipal governance.

More and more municipalities have opted to establish a more centralized real estate management. This means that in these municipalities there is one real estate management organization. Since 1995 the number of municipalities that have centralized has increased from 18 (K et al 1995) to 34 percent in 2008 (A et al 2008). In 2009 69 percent of large municipalities (> 75,000 inhabitants) have a centrally organized real estate management (T & S 2010). This should lead to a more efficient and effective real estate decision making, resulting in more strategic opportunities for a real estate contribution to the spatial developments and social policies in the city. Centralization of real estate does not automatically ensure that municipalities act more strategically on this matter. Research has shown, when comparing six municipalities, three main reasons why they do not act more strategically: (1) not enough consistency between the urban vision and the real estate strategy, (2) no financial performance indicators in the capital goods section of the BBV and (3) information for a proper and sound decision making not timely, incomplete and inaccurate. In this research, we have developed and (experimentally) used a prototype municipal real estate decision support system (PRE-system) with Rotterdamsí development Board OBR to enhance their effectiveness and efficiency. Since the decision to centralize the management of the municipal property at the OBR in 2006, the department is professionalizing. In 2009, the centralization is officially completed and OBR published the long-range perspective Rotterdam Real Estate (MPRV) 2009-2012. The purpose of this decision support system is the operationalization of the MPRV (in a computer) in such a manner that (alternative) strategic real estate decisions can be analyzed and assessed in order to achieve social goals with minimal real estate meansî. The prototype is based on three assumptions. The first is a framework for designing accommodation strategies to align the dynamic demand for real estate with the static supply on both portfolio and object level (J et al., 2009). The second assumption is the four stakeholder perspectives in Corporate and Public Real Estate Management (H en V, 2004), that of the policy maker, the controller, the user and the technical manager. The third and last assumption comes from the systems approach. In particular, the multi-actor goal oriented systems approach (L, 1998). In this approach the management of an organization is primarily seen as directed to - interdisciplinary ñ problem solving (the tasks). This means that the various interested organizations, both within and OBR and elsewhere (other departments) can provide input for the MRE system, and communicate with each other about the possible (combinations of) decisions. The prototype PRE-system is ready and tested in two districts in Rotterdam. This paper reports on the development, use and evaluation of the Municipal Real estate decision support system. The paper will focus on the role this system can play in integral (multi-actor) management and decision making on real estate portfolios of municipalities as well on the level of content as organization.

The awkward issue of high NAV discounts to share price continues to plague the management of European listed property companies as well as its shareholders. Whilst the share trades at a discount new investment decisions compete against a share buy back. From a cost of capital point of view this is an attractive option and hence share buy backs are quite frequent. The turmoil on the equity markets post-Lehman has not laid to rest old questions about the behaviour of property shares vis-‡-vis the equity market. Recent research (Sch‰tz A. and Sebastian S. 2009) looking at UK and US real estate stock indices has found medium to long-term performance of the indices to be significantly correlated to the underlying property market. This however doesnít necessarily apply to companies (and countries) in a less strong position in the equity markets. As a result management will find the NAV discount difficult to reduce without considering the variables mentioned below. This research builds on previous work by the authors as well as Bond and Shilling (2004), Brounen and ter Laak (2004) and others. Using a panel regression approach emphasis is placed on explanatory variables strengthening the company in the equity markets. These include the number of analysts covering the company, trading liquidity of the share, EPRA index membership, market capitalisation, level of free-float and market capitalisation of the exchange the share is listed on. All of these are expected to have an inverse relationship to NAV discounts. There is less emphasis on property specific variables, although geographical and sector focus is considered. Focus is also expected to have an inverse relationship with NAV discounts. Clearly other variables also have explanatory power when considering NAV discounts, but this research sets out to show that those listed companies best equipped to deal with the equity market as determined by the variables above will have the lowest NAV discounts.

Numerous office locations in the Netherlands are confronted with high structural vacancy rates. These spatial concentrations of vacant office buildings might cause an urban area to degenerate and as a consequence result in depreciation of real estate value. While the relationship between vacancy rates and rent indexes developments on a meso and macro scale has been extensively analysed, the influence of the proximity of structurally vacant buildings on the performance of surrounding buildings has received less attention. The goal of this study is to identify if the proximity of structurally vacant buildings directly affect the value of surrounding office properties. If a relationship between the proximity of vacant office and the value of surrounding buildings can be determined this might provide an extra incentive for involved stake-holders in the area to collectively reduce the vacancy problem.The importance of being located at the ìright addressî or near the ìright neighbourî is often mentioned in practise. An area with a large number of structurally vacant buildings might affect the perception of potential future tenants concerning the quality of the built environment, resulting in a decreased willingness to pay. In this paper, the influence of the proximity of structurally vacant office buildings on tenantsí willingness to pay for surrounding offices is investigated by means of a hedonic pricing approach. For this purpose, an office building data set that contains location and building features that are generally assumed to influence the rent level, has been collected. Structurally vacant office buildings were identified, and their distance to other buildings in the data set was measured to determine if the proximity to structurally vacant offices influence the willingness to pay negatively.

A robust assessment of asymmetric dependence is crucial for determining the benefits of diversification associated with including real estate in mixed-asset portfolios, but analysing asymmetric dependence is a complex, multi-dimensional problem. Using Monte Carlo simulations, we identify the most suitable metric of asymmetric dependence out of a range of methodologies commonly employed in real estate finance: the Adjusted J statistic (Alcock and Hatherley, 2010). We employ this statistic to empirically examine the dependence structures in a large sample of U.S. Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) and a broad range of benchmark assets over the period 1997-2010. Our results suggest that when we control for linear dependence and focus on the strength, direction and statistical significance of higher-order, asymmetric dependence, the benefits of diversification offered by REITs are stronger than sometimes reported, while the dependence with bonds appears to be more complex than previously assumed.

The paper develops a theoretical framework to examine the efficiency of real market. First, I compare the efficiency concept of real estate market to that of capital market. Second, I show positive short-term house price correlation in a rational expectation model. Third, I discuss empirical implications of my work.

The stagnation in a Brownfield redevelopment can be fasten-up by introducing Public-Private Partnership (PPP) agreements as argued by numerous literature. There are numerous PPP agreements and we will focus on the joint venture companies (JVC) as it is the most present form of partnership in the Netherlands, the country of our research. In our study, the joint venture company services the land with a detail land-use plan and parcellation. The final product of this company is the urban land with immediate possibility to sell the building plots. Often, the initiator of such a JVC is the municipality. In order to involve a developer to share the investment and uncertainty of the redevelopment, municipality should offer the attractive agreement terms. Focusing on the municipality, we suggested an integrated method to define the optimal terms. The method consists of two sub-models that together predict a developerís acceptance probability for the mentioned agreement. The two constitute parts are: discrete choice model and game-theoretic model. The discrete choice model estimates the preferences of a developer concerning the relevant attributes of a redevelopment project. Using these preferences as input, the game-theoretic model explores the negotiation (land-use distribution and - parcellation) between the developer and municipality. For that purpose we created a game in extensive form and using equilibriums with the backward induction to find the optimal solutions. Data is collected with an on-line questionnaire addressed to the professionals (developers and municipality representatives). Improvements can be reached by enlarging the number of the attributes and respondents but also with adding the multiple scenarios in a simulation phase. Within the specific settings and with the mentioned improvements, our model can be the basis for a decision support system (DSS) to aid municipalities in selecting the most beneficial agreement terms while incorporating different developer types.

Bid mix and shop arrangement have been seen from three theoretical perspectives. The potential tenants expect a bid mix, which enables them to take advantage of synergetic effects (shared/suspicious business) (Nelson, 1958) and which minimizes the inter competition ñ respectively makes it tolerable. Similarly, the consumer wants to minimize his transaction costs in the SC ñ as long as it is a matter of a rationally organized visit. If the consumer prefers the adventure, the amenity value will have a greater impact on the shop arrangement. But in the end it is the SC-operator who has to conciliate these demands. In this context he will be anxious ñ according to the theoretic approaches of Carter / Vandell (2005) and Brown (1991) ñ to arrange the diverse shops in a way, so that the visitor frequency is optimized in all parts of the mall. In line with this optimization two main questions appear for the SC-management: Which shops are necessary for an optimal sector mix at all? How should these shops be arranged within the mall in an (frequency) optimal way? It is the second question which will be focused in this article using a GIS-application. Regarding the current use of GIS in real estate research (Culley, 2010; Segerer, 2011), which focused the analysis of locations, a change of perspective takes place: GIS is not used anymore ìaround the real estateî but within. This approach obeys Shun-Te You (2010), who uses GIS to optimize the tenantsí distri-bution within a SC concerning an efficient use of space and visitor control. Basis for the analysis in this paper is a GIS-based model of a shopping center. Within this model not only the geometric principles of different structural level, passers infrastructure and entrances, but also a network of potential paths of consumers through multiple levels are mapped. Specifically collected data on shop mix, the dealersí satisfaction with their own site and the route choice of consumers are the basis for creating inventories and conducting further analysis. These include inter alia the comparison of the self-perception of dealers, the present customer current density and their conversion into sales. Important methods in the process are the application of kernel density estimators for modeling the flow of costumers and the assignment of clusters in reference to coupling. This method makes far-reaching statements on local coupling potentials and the effects of shop-clustering or ñdispersion on diverse target groups. In this context GIS allows not only a detailed analysis of the data, but also an adequate visualization of complex issues. In order to integrate GIS-Systems into the workflow of center managers, operators and investors, the automating of the analysis functions with the ArcGIS-integrated Model-Builder is demonstrated. So the widespread aversion (too expensive/too time-consuming) cannot be confirmed. Mapping models, which are once created and easy to modify, permit a continuous monitoring with flexible process models. Moreover adequate tools can be developed by external providers and accessed via internet on demand.

The relocation of a knowledge intensive organisation, even within city limits, can have a significant impact on the relocating company and its employees. Not only will the employees face a change in location, they will also counter new premises, changes in their workspace, and perhaps also new ways of working. In worst case, an organization can suffer from high employee turnover as a consequence of a relocation gone wrong. The best case, on the other hand, is a positive effect on employee satisfaction and productivity. Furthermore, it is important to understand that the employees are not only affected by which decisions are made and what the final location and work environment solution is. They are also affected by how the process is carried out; how needs and preferences of the employees are taken in to consideration, whether they are involved in the process or not, and how it is all communicated to them. Despite its importance, the employee experience and perception of relocation, and the risks related to it, have not been widely addressed in previous research. This paper aims to increase the understanding of employee experience and perception of relocation. This research was done as a multiple-case study with 5 organisations that have relocated during the past 18 months. In order to create an understanding of why and how the relocation was carried out, 15 thematic interviews were made with company representatives, who were actively involved in making decisions and executing the relocation of their organisation. In order to identify the employeesí experience and perception of why and how their organisation relocated, 17 employees who did not have an active role in the process were interviewed. The findings of the interviews were then compared, in order to identify gaps between what happened and how the employees understood and experienced it. The findings reveal that the decision makers and the employeesí perceptions of the organisationís relocation can be quite different from each other. Issues which often included misunderstanding were why the organisation decided to relocate, based on what criteria the new location was chosen, and who influenced and made the final decision. The research provides insight on employeesí experience and perception of relocation. Based on the findings it is suggested that, in order to achieve satisfied employees, more emphasis should be put on communication to the workforce during different phases of relocation. This way many misunderstandings concerning the organisationís motives and decision making can be avoided. This study is limited to 5 case organisations. Even though this gives a first insight on how employees experience and perceive relocation, there is still a need for more in-depth research within this area. This would give an opportunity for organisations to minimise the employee related risks in relocation, and perhaps even more actively start using relocation as a strategic tool for change.

In real estate theory ëplaceí and ëpropertyí are considered as two sides of a coin. ëPlaceí is seen as an artifact or as land, buildings and other fixed improvements on it. ëPropertyí is seen as the rights and duties of ownership. In this paper ëplaceí is conceived in a broader sense. Place is not merely a set of physical features, but ñ following Relph and Canter ñ comprises on the one hand observable activities and functions and on the other hand meanings and symbols as well. Activities refer to the behavior associated with, or intended to be housed in, a specific location. Meanings are related to peopleís conceptions and descriptions of these activities in that physical environment. Besides, several scales can be distinguished (e.g. an estate, a neighborhood, etc.). This theoretical paper discusses the dialectical relation between place and property. It is stated that property has influence on, and is influenced by, all three dimensions of place. In order to be able to describe this relation we first will examine the concepts of place and property separately. After this, the relations between property and each of the three dimensions of place will be analyzed. Firstly, we will explore how property is related to the physical features of a given locus. Secondly, we go into the relation between activities and property in places. Finally, we will investigate the most complex dimension: the influence of property on the way users give meaning to their place. The paper ends with a discussion on the dialectical relation between place and property and the consequence for real estate management and development.

This paper investigates the significance of commercial property investment in Malaysia in a mix asset portfolio from January 1998 to April 2010. Design/methodology/approach ñ Data for the research was obtained from DataStream which taken from Kuala Lumpur Composite Index (KLCI), Malaysian Government Securities (bonds), Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange Properties (properties), Malaysia Treasury Bill Discount Rate (Cash) and Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange Plantation (plantation). Findings ñ This paper provide some dependable model and technique in term of portfolio optimisation. As a result it also provides more accurate result the role of property portfolios in mixed-asset portfolios. In term of diversification benefit Malaysian property market showed some improvement in the recent years. While in asset allocation property portfolio gives property portfolios gives some significant allocation at all risk levels. Originality/value ñ This paper examines the role of property investment in Malaysia in a mix asset portfolio.

This paper investigates the causality relationship between sale price and trading volume under housing presale system by using the data of existing house price, presale house price, trading volume, and the number of new construction from 1993Q1 to 2010Q4 in four spatial housing submarkets, Taipei city, New Taipei City, Taichung city, and Kaohsiung City in Taiwan. The empirical results reveal several interesting findings. First, the direction of causality is from house price (especially for existing house price) to trading volume for most cities, which is quite different from the previoust studies. Second, house prices Granger cause the number of new construction in Taipei City and Taichung City. However, the number of new construction does not Granger cause house prices. Third, trading volume does not Granger cause the number of new construction, but the number of new construction weakly Granger cause trading volume in most cities, except in Taipei City. Fourth, existing house prices Granger cause presale house price in most cities, especially in Taipei City and New Taipei city. Furthermore, existing house prices of Taipei City Granger cause existing house prices of other cities. However, presale house price of Taipei City only weakly Granger cause presale house price of New Taipei City and Taichung City. We also find that the price-volume relationships will be a little different in upturn and downturn of real estate cycles across cities.

The decision making behaviour of institutional investors usually target prime commercial real estate. The rationale for this investment strategy is to maximise the risk adjusted returns and the diversification potential as well as quality buildings, tenant covenant strength and the subsequent revenue stream. However, in the current economic downturn, the opportunities for institutional investment in prime properties have been curtailed by the lack of stock within an investment portfolio. The UK real estate recovery has been divergent across the sectors. There is evidence to suggest that secondary locations are increasing in importance as prime stock is becoming more difficult to source and investors are being forced up the risk curve. Therefore tension exists in the decision making process for the buying and selling of prime and secondary product. In the current recovery phase of this UK real estate cycle, the paper investigates the divergent performance play amongst the commercial sectors (office, retail and industrial) and sub sectors (business parks, retail warehousing, rest of UK offices). The paper will undertake a quantitative analysis of total return on an annual and quarterly basis including high and low quartile total returns across the different sectors and sub sectors. The analysis will further consider the rolling four quarters total return to illustrate the shift in prime and secondary performance for the different sub sectors. The performance differential between the highest and lowest quartile of the different UK property segments will provide an indication of when to buy and sell secondary real estate. The significant of this analysis is to demonstrate how to optimise property performance through stock selection.

Project Management is a transverse subject whose central role embraces several disciplinary approaches. The scientific and methodological basis of its development in Italy, however, is somewhat out of line (and not just terminologically) with other contexts, especially those of English-speaking nations. One has the impression that there is still room for its further potentialisation, not only in professional spheres, where this is already in progress, but also in the academic environment. Reference to the recent literature will here be made to seek the reasons for the current resistance to change, these being primarily a consequence of the ways in which enterprises operating in building and architecture are organised. An account will then be given of the ways in which the present theoretical and methodological picture could be integrated in order to strengthen the position devoted to Project Management in Faculty of Architecture curricula, especially in courses devoted to Appraisal and the Economic Evaluation of Projects. A necessary step is the construction of a cohesive reference pattern representative of the actual situation starting from real estate development and a project's life cycle as conceived by Appraisal, and its comparison with the ìmanagerialî interpretation. A synopsis of the instruments and disciplines (or of the constitutive contributions) designed to place the appraisal-evaluative contribution alongside the apparat offered by economic engineering within which Project Management has naturally developed. Particular attention is devoted to the tools for verification of the economic and financial feasibility of projects, even in the presence of risk and uncertainty components, in addition to the consolidated methods supporting the definition of objectives, and the programming, handling and checking the realisation of a work in all its stages.

The classic property market boom and bust is conceptualised as a short term adjustment process generated by the interaction of occupation demand, the business cycle, the national credit cycle and supply lags consequent on the development cycle. An alternative perspective views the process following Shiller as a bubble that subsequently bursts. In a previous paper by the authors that studied the office market they argue that the traditional exposition of the property cycle with its time lags needs to be augmented to encompass bubble effects. The conclusion of that paper was that it may be better to view the Barras property cycle as a special case that adds time lags to a more generic model of cycles centring on adaptive expectation stimulated by external shocks. This paper sheds further light on these issues by repeating the analysis for retail property and then comparing our results with office markets. The paper takes an urban perspective and analyses property yield movements in UK cities over the period 1981-2009

The operation of the real property market will inevitable impact on the ability of an urban region to exploit, maintain or create competitive advantage and thus its ability to generate high and sustainable economic growth relative to its competitors. In the past decade the ability to retain and attract advanced services has been a key dynamic of urban growth and development in both primary and secondary cities. Thus a built environment which is equipped to meet the accommodation needs of such activities becomes a key pre-requisite for growth. A key issue relates to the very problematic nature of the markets supply side adjustment. This reflects the complexity of the process through which new space is created and the necessity within this to satisfy a significant range of legitimate and sometimes conflicting interests. The institutional capacity of a local property market to deliver new space will inevitably play a role. Adjustment is further complicated by issues of path dependency in the urban build environment. Buildings once created have market implications which may in certain circumstances last hundreds of years. The urban built environment is inevitably locked-in by its past history with the timing of previous development cycles influencing both the timing and supply of future developing opportunities Combined all these factors ensure that there will always be an unavoidable mismatch between accommodation requirements and the characteristics of the stock which is actually provided. This mismatch manifests itself in terms of pricing with markets exhibiting persistent problems of over and under pricing which distort market responses with the consequent over and under production of space. Using a broadly institutional economics approach to markets (DíArcy 2006) this paper attempts to further our understanding of the role played by property markets as determinants of urban economic development through a comparative case study analysis of recent office development activities in the central areas of two contrasting British urban regions ñ Manchester and Reading. This has two principal objectives. The first is to use the case study analysis as a mechanism for furthering our understanding of how the production of office space is driven by a complex combination of factors related to the institutional structure and capacity of local property markets interacting with wider market circumstances. As a result emphasis is placed on the characteristics of the players involved, both private and public ñ or some combination of both, their objectives, the respective policy and market contexts, and finally issues of path dependence as determinates of development opportunity. A second objective is to provide a critical assessment of the potential contribution of urban restructuring strategies based on central area office renewal as an effective contributor to urban growth and development. The paper concludes with a consideration of the contribution of the analysis to furthering our understanding of the role played by property markets as both facilitators and inhibitors of urban development and provides some suggestions for future research.

&quot;In the socialist city public space played not only socio-economic but also political role. The authorities controlled and monitored this kind of area and used it for own purposes. The impact of transformation changes resulted in fact that public space lost its political function, it began to be seen as anyones. The process of its appropriation by private parties had started. The disappearance of public squares, parks, playgrounds, street closures by developers raises concerns about the consequences of diminishing public space and questions about the role of local authorities in relation to the creation and supervision of this space. This article aims to identify factors that contribute to appropriation of public space by private actors and potential stimulants for creating a new public space in case of brownfield regeneration. The authors seek to answer the questions about the new role of both public and private actors examining the socio-economic and urban changes in the 750-thousand post-industrial city in Poland. &quot;&quot;

The Italian property market has experienced a sustained period of growth since the end of the 1990s and during the last 10 years. A large amount of this growth is attributed to the fortunes of Rome and, especially, Milan over this period but national growth has been strong in most sectors. Thus the timing of the funds introduction in 1999 coincides with an upward trend in the property cycle, which has seen them establish themselves as sought after assets. During last decade the market has experienced lots of changes due to its financialisation. Major steps have been taken to rectify the paucity of information with the introduction of databases, indexes and benchmarks. Property companies and funds have grown in professional stature. International Valuation Standards have been introduced in professions and, above all, in valuation courses at different levels. Real Estate market affected the area of education through the increase in the number of post graduated courses. Yet, still the offer of Real Estate Education is not very structured in contrast with todayís real estate crisis, which has clearly showed the need for higher skills and knowledge in professions and practices. The paper presents a profile of Real Estate Education provision in Italy. This surveys aims at giving an insight in structure of courses, accreditations, demands and offers. The study is intended to assess the current ìstate of the artî in respect of different European experiences and to provide some perspective for its future development.

We present a citation-based analysis of the most important journals on real estate and real estate finance over a time period from 1986 to 2010. For each year, those three articles with the highest number of citations according to Google Scholar are identified. A thorough analysis of all 75 selected articles reveals that the focus of interest has been on (1) empirical research, (2) mainly using data of residential real estate, with (3) the primary objective of evaluating real estate investment until the midst 1990s. In order to derive reliable risk-return relations for real estate investment, (4) asset pricing as the main task of real estate appraisal is in the centre of attention, too. Appraisal issues have relatively gained importance for the last fifteen years in comparison to investment issues. Interdisciplinary aspects and sustainable issues are only very rarely integrated in appraisal methods, the focus is primarily on maximizing economic returns. Therefore, our citation analysis confirms that the Financial Management Approach of Dasso and Woodward (1980) is the predominant approach particularly in the United States. Our findings regarding our basic sample of articles are crosschecked by several robustness tests. For future research activities, it seems to be quite promising to focus on the one hand on interdisciplinary aspects and on the other hand to contribute to the theoretical foundation of real estate with the aim of developing a common body of knowledge.

In a modern economy, capital resources play a key role in generating revenue of companies. Appropriate use of assets can increase profitability of company, however, inadequate management of assets could lead to insolvency. Real estate can be a good collateral for loans, it is also possible to use them for lease-back. Polish CSO data indicate that the value of buildings and structures owned by enterprises as a share of the value of fixed assets differs from 37.8% to 86.8%. Statistics proves that companies dealing with communication and transport are of the lowest involvement in real estate and the companies dealing with real estate - the highest. Taking this fact into account, the authors have defined the problem to investigate. The question was how the involvement in real estate influences companies liquidity. The study was conducted on the Polish market.

The recent collapse of the non-residential real estate development & construction market rises the question, what the future demand will be for real estate space and how these will influence future development activities. The aim of this research is to provide a framework for stock-flow analysis and forecasting of real estate development (macro, per sector and per property type, such as office, industrial, commercial , health care, school and public buildings). The economic approach of investment for expansion of the space stock is based on the growth of production by the observed economic sectors and on the growth of the economy as a whole (GDP). This is confronted with analysis of the physical growth of a sectoral stock (in square meters or otherwise), as production and accommodation capacity. Moreover with the growth of the use of the stock (such as employees in offices, scholars in schools and so on). Additionally future investment for renewal of the building stock depends on the life time structure of the present building stock renewal and the capability of this stock to meet contemporary requirements (after refurbishment). Topical problems in The Netherlands are a high vacancy and underutilization of offices and of other buildings and business complexes. Re-use and transformation activities are limited. The agrarian, industrial and logistical sector tend to a high replacement activity, with relocation and spatial concentration. Consequently this leads to high disinvestment and disposal of buildings which cannot meet contemporary technological, economic and environmental standards. Generally, the (trend of) new development for expansion and replacement of the building stock is slightly downward. An exception is the health sector, with a growing shortage of facilities for an ageing population. Unfortunately, development activity for the health care and the non-profit sector will be limited by financial conditions.

The development of REITs in the European Union (EU) has created a common understanding on core features but a ìEuroREITî does not exist yet. Member States¥ (MS) national tax regimes generally provide for beneficial tax treatment to domestic REITs only. Although direct taxation is not one of the EU competences the Freedoms have unlimited priority and MS¥ must exercise their direct taxation powers in accordance with the Treaty. This separate treatment of nondomestic REITs is an infringement of the Freedom of movement of capital. Applying the relevant case law of the European Court Justice (ECJ), non-domestic REITs should legally benefit from tax treatments for domestic REITs, even though the foreign REIT does not comply with domestic REIT regulations. Implied powers of movement beside the Treaty may be seen where MS¥ (e.g. Netherlands, Bulgaria and Spain) provide domestic tax treatment to non-domestic REITs. This effect of the ECJ can be shown by counterfactual reasoning using political mechanisms, e.g. ìEuropeanizationî (used within political sciences to explain the process towards ìEuropeî and explore to the future of MS¥ tax sovereignty).

This paper contributes to a fast growing literature which introduces game theory in the analysis of real option investments in a competitive setting. Specifically, in this paper we focus on the issue of market incompleteness and the practical difficulty of finding a twin security in order to apply real option analysis to real estate projects. We show that an alternative to the standard replicating portfolio approach comes from the use of game theory and mixed strategies. We present some theoretical results and we then present a numerical exercise using the information set obtained on a real estate development in South London. We compare our results to previous analysis based on the standard real options framework.

The Credit Crunch brings to light a renewed interest in the operational tasks of Corporate Real Estate Management (CREM): a so called ëEntrepreneurial Cooperationí (ëOndernemend Samenwerken) in restructuring, maintenance and control. This so called ëEntrepreneurial Cooperationí implies a renewed approach of the internal customer and also a renewed cooperation with the building contractors for restructuring, maintenance and control. It leads to supply chain optimization and also to new roles for the contractors with more responsibility to the end-users. ëOn routeí to a Demand Management Organization, ëEntrepreneurial Cooperationí could be characterized as a total re-definition of the mutual cooperation role patterns of staff maintenance and control and itís building contractors for restructuring, maintenance and control. ëEntrepreneurial Cooperationí anticipates on the dire necessity and urgency of budget cuts in CREM staff. It is also a highly needed reaction on the recent wide spread diversification of new building methods, new building products and new building materials and of new related ICT-technologies used in operational management and technical design. For most of the CREM organizations it is hard to keep up with these new technologies, especially no there is a necessity to down size their staff. ëEntrepreneurial Cooperationí works with cross functional teams from Board, CREM staff and building contractors. The CREM organization will focus itself on the interpretation and direction of the growing diversity in internal customer preferences inside the company and on the process management of this. The CREM organization will also address their contractors on their growing specialist knowledge and experiences with new methods, products, materials and ICT-technologies and will ask them to invest in sustainable options on their insights in real energy saving measurements. The business case ëEntrepreneurial Cooperationí discussed in this paper, takes place inside the Eindhoven University of Technology ñ the host University of this yearís ERES 2011 Conference ñ where one of the authors is manager of the CREM staff maintenance and control. The business case is monitored by one of the well known Dutch business consultancies, which recent produced a first formal evaluation, with key results: ï a shift in task responsibilities ï a smaller staff ï use of smaller budgets. The paper could be an initial guide for modernization for CREM organizations. But could also provide ëlessons to learní for the whole building industry sector, especially for restructuring, maintenance and control: ï anticipation on innovative technological developments ï anticipation on new market opportunities, trough a broader marketing of new specialist knowledge application

Residential markets are mostly local and regional. However, often reporting the state of the market in the country there is the concentration on the market in the capital and major cities. It is worth to remember that there are many local and regional markets with specific characteristics. Investor planning his activities must be aware of this diversity and local conditions. The authors decided to examine the regional diversity of residential property markets in Poland, taking as indicators: trading activity and prices. Due to the limited information about the prices they are examined in period 2004-2009, while the activity of the transaction was studied from 1995 to 2009. The authors tried to find an explanation of major regional differences.

In the academic literature about construction of housing price indexes, administrative geographic areas are mostly used. Very rarely discusses and analyzes the question what is the optimal regional division from a statistical point of view as well as a practical point of view. In the design of the housing price indexes, we will always have a problem that certain housing markets have very few observations and it is therefore not possible to publish a robust and reliable monthly index series. On way to remedy this problem is to, instead of estimating a monthly index, estimate a quarterly index. The question of periodicity is therefore an issue that must be solved simultaneously with the issue of regional division. The aim of this paper is to construct an index family for an entire nation (in this case Sweden). The goal is to construct a housing price index for Sweden as a whole, but also for a number of regions. The number of regions is, however, an open question. Our main purpose is therefore to optimize the regional division of the estimation of regional housing price index. The paper will make use of the traditional hedonic methodology, where we relate the price of houses against value-influencing attributes such as floor space, standard and age. In addition, we will control for the attributes in the neighborhood such as distance to the CBD and lake views. The study will be based on a unique database provided by Valueguard AB. The database contains about 70% of all house sales in Sweden since 2005. The database has been constructed by linking data from real estate agents and official property register. This makes it possible to relate the price at the transaction date, with value-influencing attributes as opposed to the official index, where the price of land registration date related to the attributes. Preliminary results suggest that it is possible to create a family of housing price indices in a nation that are more robust and reliable by optimizing the regional division.

It has been widely acknowledged that real estate prices are spatially autocorrelated and correcting for spatial autocorrelation has become a standard practice in hedonic pricing models to improve estimation efficiency. However, its causes have not yet been fully explored. This paper puts forward by hypothesizing that spatial autocorrelations in housing prices are determined by market volatility: low market volatility weakens spatial autocorrelations and vice versa. The hypothesis is tested using data for over 150 000 transactions of homes sold between 1997 and 2009 in Hong Kong. The empirical results confirm the volatility explanation for the spatial autocorrelations. The finding contributes to a better understanding of the causes of spatial autocorrelation.

The residential housing market can play an important role in the reduction of global carbon emissions. Energy rating is viewed as an effective tool for reducing energy consumption since the information conveyed may help to encourage energy conservation among private households. This paper reports evidence on the economic implications of energy performance ratings. We use a dataset of 15,515 valuations of residential property in England and Wales. The data include the UK Governmentís Standard Assessment Procedure (UKSAP_2005) for Energy Rating of Dwellings, household energy expenditure, environmental, structural and household characteristics. The paper tests the relationships between house value, energy expenditure and energy rating. The results suggest that this information is both capitalised into the value of residential property in the UK and heavily affects household energy expenditure.

The paper analyses the rent market in Spanish cities using information from Census data, 2001. Information about total rental homes are extracted from Census microdata as well as mobility of households during the previous decade. Two exercises use those information. First, deep on the household characteristics of tenants. Second, analyses the determinants of rent decisions based on the socioeconomic characteristics of the head of household. Results show how rent market is used to cover the housing needs during short period of time before jump to ownership, independently of the level of household income

This study presents a simple formula for the gains from sale and leaseback transactions, based on the traditional theory of a firm. A typical firm, which intends to sell ?% of its whole capital to the SPC and retain the benefits of its location through a tenancy, will be taken as an example. It is shown that the unit capital cost for a typical firm would have structural change and the rate of capital depletion would play a key role in the profit calculating process.

This study sets out a practical methodology for assessing and measuring the risk of unlisted property funds on a forward looking basis. Renewed investor interest in property as an asset class had led to tremendous growth in the size and importance of the indirect property investment market. Having emerged during the early part of the century, unlisted property funds are now a widely used institutional investor conduit for property investment. However, the academic and commercial literature relating to the estimation of risk and return in property portfolios remains scant, in part due to the paucity of available data. However, this study makes use of a unique dataset of UK institutional unlisted property funds, provided by both Investment Property Databank and CBRE Investors Global Multi Manager. The data set is quarterly data covering the period Q4 2003 to Q4 2010, and provides significant depth in terms of the characteristics of the underlying property portfolios and the financial structure of the unlisted fund vehicles themselves. Modern factor modelling techniques are employed to identify and attribute the key drivers of both risk and return in these funds. The significance of a range of both fundamental and macroeconomic risk factors is tested. Conditional on the estimated factor models, we also look to identify if managers are adding value, that is, generating positive alphas. The final results are presented and their relevance for investment analysis and portfolio construction are discussed.

Investments in sustainable real estate make sense from a financial point of view. Many of these invest- ments have a positive NPV, even at current energy prices and with current technology. Yet investment volumes are still low. What is happening, and what can academic research tell us about the economics of sustainable real estate investment?

Due to a protective national retail policy regarding inner city shopping areas, most peripheral retail centres in the Netherlands are so called furniture strips. Until 2004, peripheral retail developments like those in Great Britain, France and the United States were not allowed. Since 2004, the Dutch retail market has been liberalised. Although new peripheral shopping centres may be developed, restructuring or extending existing furniture strips to all-round shopping centres may be another option. This article explores these options from a consumersí perspective. By means of a questionnaire, shopping behaviour of visitors of two large furniture strips in the Netherlands was investigated. In addition, respondents were asked whether they would visit specific leisure facilities as well if these would be added to a furniture strip.

In this paper, we review an emerging type of dwelling, indicated as Smart Home, with a focus on future user lifestyles, needs and preferences. Researchers envision a future information society stemming from the convergence of ubiquitous computing, ubiquitous communication and intelligent environments, especially residential environment. Smart Homes have noble aims; they are said to be able to support different ranges of activities such as tele-working, tele-shopping, tele-communicating, tele-educating, tele-caring, etc. in the home environment. Moving from the industrial society to the information society will transfer homes from only being a sleeping accommodation towards being the most important hub of human life. A change that will dramatically affect the design of social places, work places, residential places, cities and future real estate business and maintenance models. In this paper, we investigate the major challenges of Smart Homes as a new dwelling concept. Surveys have shown that user acceptance of any changes in personal spaces is linked to user needs and preferences. In turn, user preferences are directly related to user lifestyles. Therefore, inspired by research in the field of user centered design and future lifestyles, we redefine the concept of housing to increase the acceptance and marketing of Smart Homes as future housing. By examining a number of examples, upcoming trends and developments in housing technologies and concepts are reviewed and analyzed. A multidimensional classification framework of a Smart Home suggested which allows a better understanding of the new elements and spaces of this future home environment. A new concept of a home environment is presented in which Virtual Space (VS) and Ambient Intelligent Space (AmI-S) are integrated with in the Physical Space (PS). Furthermore, possible changes for lifestyles as a result of activity changes enabled by new technological developments are identified. Linking the new home environment concepts comprised of VS, AmI-S and PS with the user_s lifestyles provides a research framework for the investigation of Smart Homes. Through this framework we expect to answer questions on the feasibility and impact of new technologies on real estate. Which architectural conditions may promote acceptance of these new technologies by users. The presented research framework is not only relevant for academic researchers but also for real estate investors, because it highlights the risks that need to be managed when developing smart real estate.

Municipal housing companies create extensive outcome for the public by achieving benefits in economical, social and environmental areas. Surrounded by multiple internal and external stakeholders like municipal holding, council, authorities, tenants, employees, suppliers and service providers, the housing companies have to cope with various demands. Not only should their activities contribute to such diverse areas as social welfare, regional economy and ecology, but they are often asked to also realize considerable profits to reduce budget deficits of the municipality. Fulfilling these different and partly contradictory expectations at the same time is a challenge. Multiple and conflicting objectives combined with a lack of transparency concerning targeted and actual performance of activities whose monetary value is hardly measurable make corporate management difficult. Thus, the fundamental pre-requisite for managing a municipal housing company effectively is a clearly formulated target system. Within the last years some housing companies with focus on social and public housing started measuring their financial, social and ecological performance and communicating their added value for the public. The concept of ìurban returnî tries to calculate a monetary value of the performance of housing companies for a municipality. Besides, a network of European housing companies developed a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) report with standardized performance indicators to communicate their performance in various areas. However, both approaches are focused on measuring existing activities. A target system addressing the different stakeholder expectations and supporting an overall effectiveness and efficiency of the company does not yet exist. Therefore, an approach for a sustainable stakeholder management for housing companies is presented. At first, an analysis of the stakeholders and their expectations towards the company is conducted. Based on the resulting overview of expectations target conflicts can be identified. They build the basis for a balance of interests leading to a target system for the effective management of the company. In a further step, a controlling system can be implemented and an appropriate communication plan to stakeholders can be established. The first phases of this stakeholder management concept were applied to a German municipal housing company which had been pioneer in publishing a CSR report within the European housing network. The suggested approach is presented with examples of this case study.

The aim of this paper is to increase the knowledge about industrial land and floor space forecasting. From the rare research on this subject it is known that the knowledge about factors that influence demand and techniques that model demand is not available in abundance. However, different kinds of models are used extensively in practice. This paper focuses the difference between of stated and revealed preferences. In planning practices stated preferences are often used to forecast land and floor space demand on a short term basis (approximately 3 to 5 years). The surveys, on which the datasets that were uses in this paper, were conducted with this aim in particular. Because the surveys were held regularly and the response rates are high, individual firms can be followed through time. So it was possible to put together a panel dataset of firms with stated and revealed preferences. The analysis of this dataset shows that in general stated and revealed preferences for property ownership or rent and location type did match very well. However, preferences for rent are realized more often than preferences for ownership. Whether stated preference matched with revealed preferences for land and floor space was more difficult to determine. At the level of the individual firm, there are huge variations in the stated ñ revealed preference ratios. Some firms only realized only 20% of their stated demand, while others realized double the amount of land of floor space (200%) they initially wanted or more. However, the accumulated stated preference for both land and floor space was only slightly above the accumulated revealed preference. This indicates that stated preferences seem to be useful and reliable to predict demand in the near future. However, this conclusion is valid for the group of firms that had the intension to move and actually did relocate. This leaves two other groups out of consideration: ∑ The unexpected stay group. This group of firms had plans to relocate, but did not had plans to relocate but actually did move. If the survey forecast should be accurate the initial situation, preferences and the choices of these two groups should be almost equal to the expected moves group. This means that: ∑ The initial situation of the expected movers group, the unexpected stay group and the windfall moves group are more or less the same (the groups are not homogeneous). ∑ The stated preferences of the expected moves group and the unexpected stay group are more or less the same. ∑ The stated preferences of the expected moves group and the windfall movers are more or less the same. Unfortunately these conditions are not met. The windfall movers differ substantially from the unexpected stay group, while at the same time these two groups also differ substantially from the expected movers group. Also the group of windfall movers is much larger than the search-moved group. Another, complicating factor is that the preferences seem not stable over time, but show considerable changes. Although, this can be due to a composition effect we should be careful because preferences seem not stationary. Also important for the accuracy of a forecast are: ∑ The time period to which the forecast applies. ∑ The state of the economy (during a recession firms postpone relocations). Although it seems that forecasts based on surveys are inadequate, this conclusion is only partially true because with the expected moves group the aggregated stated and revealed preferences of land and floor space are almost equal. This means that future research has to concentrate on two issues: ∑ We have to shift more to the micro-level and longitudinal approaches to understand search and substitution behaviour. Efforts in modelling the demography of firms show that this may be far more complex than the housing market modelling. Still, analytical models applied in housing studies may suit well. It might well be that existing macro models might be improved with micro-analysis. ∑ We have to look deeper in the decision process of moving, postponing or abandoning relocations.

Local Authorities worldwide are encouraging adaptation to reduce building related energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. The City of Melbourne is promoting the retrofit of 1,200 CBD properties before 2020 with sustainability measures as part of their policy to become a carbon neutral city, and the City of Amsterdam aims at cutting their CO2 emissions with 40% by 2025. In Amsterdam, the oversupply of office space makes across use adaptation, conversion from offices into housing, an interesting development. The concept of adaptation is well developed in Europe, though the scale of some of the post war developments has created different forms of building perhaps less adaptable or suited to change. The need to adapt buildings and to reduce environmental footprints becomes more pressing over time as global concentrations of carbon dioxide increase. Moreover, the ageing workforce and the new way of working lead to a decline in the demand of office space, and so conversion becomes a possibility for dealing with obsolete offices. Applying knowledge of adaptation to examine the adaptation potential of office buildings in Melbourne and Amsterdam, it is possible to learn where similarities and differences exist and where new practices can be shared. This paper addresses the question; what are the possibilities for building conversions in Melbourne and Amsterdam? Using Amsterdam and the Melbourne CBD as case studies, the research analysed the across use adaptation potential of office buildings in Amsterdam and in Melbourne CBD. The outcomes of this research show where similarities and differences exist and are relevant to all urban areas where adaptation of existing office buildings can mitigate the impacts of climate change and enhance the city for another generation of citizens and users.

Sustainability continues to gain relevance in the real estate sector. More and more owners and investors are requesting information and advice concerning sustainability features of their properties. This development represents a challenge to property valuation. Valuation professionals are requested to take a stand if and how sustainability influences property valuation (including the need for quantification, respectively). In order to answer these questions an operationalization of the concept of sustainability in regard to property valuation is required. This is further complicated by the lack of mutual understanding and established standards regarding sustainability in the real estate sector. Since valuation professionals are increasingly confronted with these questions in their daily work, there is an urgent need for clear and practicable guidelines. In Europe or even internationally there are currently no signs of standard solutions any time soon. A group of scholars have started as a private initiative to develop respective sustainability guidelines for Germany, Austria and Switzerland with the support of several valuersí associations. Apart from generic guidelines, the manual includes a long-list of value-relevant property features including sustainability features, a discussion of how sustainability features can be included in the most common valuation methods and guidelines on the quantification of the impact of sustainability features on property value. First results will be presented in the paper.

The aim of this paper is to introduce the present state of sustainable development strategies of rehabilitation centers in Finland. Methodology: The triple bottom line approach to sustainability is used to understand the sustainability of Finnish rehabilitation centers. The data from the rehabilitation centers is gathered with walkthrough audits and interviews in 6 case rehabilitation centers in Finland. Additionally a sustainability matrix was filled using the data from the web-pages of all 100 Finnish rehabilitation centers. Findings: The findings suggest that the importance of sustainability related issues is well acknowledged in Finnish rehabilitation centers but they lack the knowledge, ability and monetary resources to carry out large scale alterations in the premises and processes. Thus improving the sustainability should be done in small steps and must be well justified in monetary terms. Research limitation: The research findings are limited to Finnish context and the material from interviews and walk-through audits to just 6 Finnish rehabilitation centers. Still, the experiences from other Finnish rehabilitation centers suggest that the results may quite well be generalized to at least the Finnish context. Originality/value: Sustainability of rehabilitation centers has not been studied neither in the Finnish or international context, even though the realm of rehabilitation is vast and the sustainability related challenges remarkable.

Registration of land title in recorded history came up with the wars and conquest of land. The need to ensure these conquest territories and boundaries are well captured necessitates registration of these territories. 1703 was the year that the first known Land Deeds Registry was opened. Modernity and technological advancement further brought about proper recording of these registries. This paper would examine land registration laws, globally and in Nigeria with particular reference to Lagos state. It would further provide insight into the need to sustain the desired effect and produce a satisfactory result without wasting time on registration formalities.

The study provides insight into the pricing of publicly traded European real estate equities. The Fama-French three-factor model, as well as unconditional and conditional Fama-MacBeth regressions are applied to a sample of 275 real estate equities from 16 European countries over the period 1988 to 2009. The results show that within the real estate equity market, a significant value effect exists, while no small-size effect is present. Real estate equity returns vary significantly with the excess market return and a pan-European value factor. Moreover, returns are driven by a systematic size factor, although this effect is not as pronounced. The findings further indicate a better integration of the European real estate equity market with the general equity market from 1999 onwards. Consistent with other asset pricing studies, no factor risk loading proves to be consistently priced in unconditional asset pricing tests. However, the study reveals the explanatory power of systematic risk factors, especially beta, when conditioned on both general and real estate market states. The results moreover indicate differences in the pricing of real estate equities between Europe and the US.

This paper aims to increase understanding of partnership-based urban residential development as a system by taking the first steps towards a hypothesis pointing to that direction. Design and methodology The data used was collected from two in-depth residential development case studies in Helsinki region, Finland. The general analytic strategy of this study was continuous coding of the data throughout the research phase and also afterwards. As a framework in urban residential development this study used Public-Private-People Partnership (4P), which connects all the relevant parties of urban residential development process. Findings It is suggested that a system is a relevant construct with which partnership-based urban residential development processes can be examined. Research limitations As the results are based on just two cases under Finnish development legislation and their framework, only analytical generalisations can be made. Practical implications Seeing urban residential development process as a system can help to communicate urban development process with other kinds of complexity, such as complexity found in sustainability, and to enhance discussion on systems thinking and complex systems in urban residential development. Originality/value So far urban planning and commercial development have been suggested to be systems. This paper contributes to non-linear approach to urban residential development process, which is in contrast with more traditional event-sequence models of development.

In this article, we focus on a topic very little studied in the economic literature, the tax segregation. In fact, the research on the territorial taxation in France is rare. These findings are surprising because the use of tax data disaggregated for analysis of differential taxation and social inequality is not without interest. Thus, we study the distribution of wealth in France from data on the fortune tax over the period 2002-2009. We measure initially segregation wealth of France using segregation indices selected from the shapes and spatial manifestations of residential segregation in five dimensions made by Massey and Denton (1988). Then, we investigate the distribution of territorial heritage of retirees on the basis of several indicators: the percentage of tax households taxable to fortune tax compared to the total population, the importance of taxpayers to fortune tax on the number of tax households and finally the weight of retirees in the population. This work is derived from an agglomerative hierarchical clustering. We note that retirees are not installed in the richest communes, but rather in areas where the sweetness of life is fundamental, or in poorer municipalities.

Investment valuation activity presents several issues regarding zoning, market analysis, construction, but also valuation and financing. The latest are mainly financial issues, that require both the logical framework of analysis and a financial model as supporting tool. Sunlight Village is a teaching case study on land development valuation which aims to make students and practitioners reasoning about some important issues hidden behind an investment valuation. Moreover the purpose of the case is developing financial model skills by working with a spread sheet. An empty plot of land close to the seaside, purchased by a real estate building company a few years ahead, has received the municipality approval for the development either of residential buildings or of residential buildings and a hotel. At the same time the company has been offered by an international fund a certain amount of money to sell the land. All input data are given but, in order to solve the case study, students need to create a financial model (including P&L statement, balance sheet and the cash-flows statement for two alternative projects). Final considerations on the profitability have to be done by determining some key indicators.

The housing market no-arbitrage relation states the asset market equilibrium relationship between housing prices and rents. However, the theory gives neither the adjustment speed towards the equilibrium relationship nor the reaction magnitudes of housing prices and rents to changes in the user cost for housing capital. This study investigates empirically the adjustment of housing prices towards the no-arbitrage relation using data for the period 1975-2010 for the Helsinki metropolitan area. The empirical analysis is based on a three-dimensional near-VAR model that is augmented by error-correction mechanisms in each of the three equations and that is estimated by Seemingly Unrelated Regression (SUR). In line with the theory, housing prices adjust significantly towards the housing market equilibrium. The adjustment is highly sluggish, however. In contrast with the common assumption that housing prices are sticky especially downwards, the empirical analysis implies that real housing prices adjust more rapidly towards the no-arbitrage relation when prices are above the relation. It is argued that a likely reason for the sticky upwards adjustment is the liquidity constraints faced by households. In line with this argument, the results indicate that liquidity constraints have a significant influence on the adjustment speed of housing prices, i.e., looser liquidity constraints appear to induce faster adjustment of housing prices towards the equilibrium. The estimated model is also used to explore the impacts of user cost changes on housing prices, rents, and supply.

In the UK, the movement of the ownership of investment property away from small scale local entrepreneurs to larger companies and institutions from the 1960s onwards, attracted the interest of professional advisors well versed in finance theory and practice. Investment property valuation models came under intense academic and practical scrutiny leading to a prolonged debate from the 1970s onwards. But development appraisal models in the UK had escaped similar scrutiny until recently. In 2008, UK Planning Policy Statement (PPS) 12, in setting out the planning policy framework and guidance, stipulated that viability considerations should constitute part of the evidence base in Core Strategies and other Development Plan Documents. This was particularly relevant in setting housing targets. In 2010, Planning Policy Statement 3: Housing (PPS3) required Local Planning Authorities to set targets for affordable housing and to assess the likely economic viability of these targets. This advice has been reinforced by Planning Inspectorate judgements, where core strategies have been found to be unsound due to a lack of economic viability testing to justify affordable housing targets. Development viability modelling means development appraisal techniques are now in the UK academic and practice spotlight. This paper examines development appraisal in the context of Development Viability Assessment (DVA). Adopting a case study approach of a number of viability appraisals throughout the UK, it critically examines the application of development appraisal to DVA by addressing 2 main questions. First, how does the application of technique differ from a corporate finance model, as applied to investment cash flows? Second, what are the practical issues relating to the specifics of development viability assessment at both area-wide and site specific level?

Sustainability in cohesion with real estate investments is still at its initial stage. However, the topic has become more and more attractive over the last years within the field of research. A few prior studies have shown that companies, who act according to an ESG-Agenda, are characterised by lower levels of specific risk. On the basis of these results, this study provides a basic investigation of the contribution of sustainable real estate to an investorís portfolio. Isolating companies who implemented an ESG-Agenda within their long term strategy, we analyse their financial performance characteristics in order to examine the dynamics of sustainable real estate within a multi-asset portfolio. Out of this reason we develop an Index consisting of companies who operate in the real estate sector and act in accordance with an ESG-Agenda. We apply this Index to a mean-variance framework within a multi-asset portfolio and determine the optimal proportion of sustainable real estate considering varying risk and return profiles. The overall results should give an indication of the opportunity of diversification within a multi-asset allocation.

The aim of this paper is to analyze Baltic shopping centre segment dynamics in the context of changing economy. Changing environment ñgrowing or decreasing wages and impact to purchasing power has a direct impact on demand and supply in the shopping centresí (SC) market. Deeper analysis of changing environment in addition to internal market structural analysis shall provide us information helpful for real estate (RE) market functioning trends forecasting. Theoretical consideration on SC market functioning in this paper is based on previous research of the author; comparative literature review was conducted to summarize various findings on factors influencing office market dynamics in the context of changing economy. The results of conducted analysis summarize previous empirical researches proving that interrelations, expectations and actions of the market participants directly depend on surrounding, or larger systemsí impact. Changing external environment ñ growing or decelerating economy, fluctuating unemployment, salaries and wages dynamics have a significant impact on demand and supply in the market. This theoretical research is limited to Baltic SC market segment. Deeper analysis of changing surrounding environment impacts for shopping centresí market shall provide us information useful for RE market functioning trends forecasting. Certain internal and external economic changes (inflation growth, banksí financial policies, and RE market crisis in other region, etc.) set some norms of internal participantsí abilities, attitudes and preferences. Close monitoring of surrounding systems and internal elements behaviour may allow softening possible outcomes or at least help to be better prepared for future changes in the market. Originality/value This paper summarizes that RE market is surrounded, or is a part of other, larger macro market, and it is worth to analyze market functioning having in mind potential impact of surrounding environments. The fact that SC can not be moved into other geographical location, tells that property market is sensitive to surrounding macro markets in particular. These aspects encourage going deeper and seeing major impacts of the surrounding environment in terms of impactís extent and significance over time.

Much of the attention in the recent global financial crisis has centred on real estate. As Goodhart (2010) notes, more bank lending is for property than anything else and real estate is the most common form of collateral for lending (whatever the purpose of the loan). Vickers (2011), chair of the UK Independent Commission on Banking, suggests that ìthe shock from the fall in property prices, even from their inflated levels of a few years ago, should not have caused havoc on anything like the scale experienced.î Unfortunately, in his January 2011 statement on the commissionís progress towards a framework for bank regulation, this is the last time that property is mentioned. It appears to be the root of the problem but not part of the solution. This paper examines one part of the bank lending process, the use of valuations in secured lending. In particular it looks at the bases of valuation that could be applied to this role. Definitions of value identified in International Valuation Standards include Market Value, Investment Value and Mortgage Lending Value. Market Value and Mortgage Lending Value figure in the Basel agreements relating to solvency ratios; Investment Value has not been hitherto identified as a basis fit for the secured lending role. The paper discusses the nature of bubbles and crashes and examines real estate markets in the context of this literature. It examines the detail of the three valuation bases and their application and, using UK commercial property market data before and after the property crash of 2007, identifies the level of valuations that would have been produced at those times. Conclusions are then made as to the appropriate basis for bank lending, practical limitations of applying those bases and recommendations for the future.

Ho Chi Minh City is under the transition to market economy process. Socialist market economy is the key interested point to analyse the transformation in land use. Therefore my study is examining the impact of imperfect property rights on land redevelopment to understand the integrating between property rights and urban transformation. Research question: What are the impacts of imperfect property rights on land transformation of the HCMC? Hypothesis: The planning is also the factor change the property rights characteristic. Design: Land redevelopment projects case study based on dependency framework highlights the role of the institutional change and balance of different stakeholders in affecting spatial output. Data analysis: Secondary data about private house development projects and in-depth interview with land user. Outcomes are obtainable in a series of maps of land and property change in 15 years. Comments and limitation: The study suggests that examining planning as a property process and recognizing it, as part of a larger negotiation process with respected to property rights, will improve the success of planning implementation. Even study highlights the important of institutions but there is less emphasis on politic. One aspect of my study I very much like is the focus on a specific sector that I know well. The informal rules are very important in these circumstances and I have to have local knowledge to know them. The informal networks are often hard to understand. Sometimes relatively subtle differences in the rules matter a great deal.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the determinants of inter-city and intra-city wage differentials in Korea. To do so, it is first necessary to delineate the Korean Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs). As there have not been much studies on both wage differentials across cities and economically-defined geographic areas, the regional differences in the standard of living have barely been analyzed. Since Koreaís rapid growth in the 1970s, more of the population has concentrated around the Capital area, Seoul. However, it is very difficult to find a concrete reason for this overconcentration in some sense. According to the Roback model, individuals in an open economy maximize their utility by choosing their location of residence with consideration of the regional average wage, cost of living, and amenities. The wage differentials is therefore a very important factor in the choice of where to live and work. In many cases, these wage differentials also represent regional competitiveness. Inter-city wage differentials are the comparison of average wage levels across cities, while intra-city wage differentials are the comparison of income disparities within cities. Therefore, it is both necessary and meaningful for regional policy to identify the determinants of inter-city and intra-city wage differentials. This research will use the Korean Occupational Employment Statistics (OES), a unique regional micro database for wages along with individual characteristics such as age, sex, education, and detailed working experience (including occupations and industries). Although it is not panel data, it provides valuable yearly labor income information on approximately 100,000 workers since 2001. There are a couple of important findings from the empirical work: First, inter-city wage differentials and intra-city wage differentials are bigger in large cities. Second, wage does not seem reflective to an economy much, which means wage is substitutable not only to the cost of living but also something else. The third, intra-city wage differentials have a negative relationship with the employment of knowledge based manufacturing industries.

Our empirical study analyzes house search duration in ìhotî (rising prices) and ìcoldî (declining prices) housing markets. It focuses on the effect of householdsí ex ante holding horizon ñ or the expected housing tenure at the time of their search ñ on the realized search duration. Our empirical analysis controls for physical and locational housing characteristics, transaction price, financing choices across buyers, buyer preferences, and other factors, and the results are analyzed for a pooled sample, and then compared for the ìhotî and ìcoldî housing markets. To our knowledge, this is the first empirical study of this kind. Large amounts of information available in realtorsí databases, MLS and other real estate data sources, have enabled researchers to analyze in depth various aspects of housing liquidity on the seller side. However, the buyer side analyses are very limited, as this information is often only available through a costly and likely a time-consuming survey. Two surveys of recent homebuyers were performed in the ìhotî market in 2005 and in the ìcoldî market in 2008. In each case, over 6000 questionnaires were mailed in a large geographical area in California. A12% response rate provided enough data for our study. Our analysis shows that adding the expected housing tenure variables improves the overall fit of our empirical model of effects on buyer side liquidity, or time until purchase. In the pooled sample, a longer expected occupancy increases the search time. Furthermore, investors, who occupy about 10% of our sample (13% in ìhotî, 7% in ìcoldî), spent statistically significantly more time buying a house if they plan to sell it in the next 1-5 years, rather than those with longer holding horizons. This result suggests that the effects of expected housing tenure on search duration is non-homogeneous across buyer types as it is sensitive to consumption versus investment purchase intent. An interesting empirical result was obtained when we controlled for the proximity of a house to the coast. In both ìhotî and ìcoldî subsamples households searched longer when the purchased house was located in a coastal zip code area, and this effect was statistically significant. When each subsample was decomposed into the coastal and the inland regions, the investment motive appears to be present only for inland houses while purchasing a coastal property appears to be consumption-driven. Second, the positive tenure dependence effect is highly statistically significant only for coastal houses in the ìhotî market, and inland houses in the ìcoldî market. Does this imply that in the ìhotî market households tend to improve their living standards by ìmoving upî (and thus select their better-located home more carefully if expected housing tenure is longer), while in the ìcoldî market they instead tend to ìmove downî and thus buy houses with careful tenure considerations in more inland regions? We believe that our study would contribute to the literature of the housing liquidity on buyer side, as well as enrich the understanding of different driving forces of house search under different housing market conditions.

In Japan, the term ìCREî did not come to be used until the mid-2000s, but long before that, many managers had already recognized that real estate (especially land) is one of the most essential business resources. The problem seems to lie in the fact that Japanese executives do not understand CRE management. In recent years, Japanese CRE management research has made considerable progress in terms of both quality and quantity. The main purpose of this paper is to explain the characteristics of Japanese CRE management research. Specifically, this paper describes the history and the statistics of the field, and discusses the content of CRE management research, providing a definition, practices, and organizational structure. Finally, it is discussed that ICT, as well as a dedicated department staffed with qualified CRE management personnel are needed. However, because some CEOs misunderstand these and believe that such will be an excessive strain on their business resources, some CEOs are led to abandon the practice of CRE management. In fact, CRE management takes many and varied forms, but it seems that some methods apply to all cases in Japan. Each corporation needs to formulate its own CRE management by itself. Through this process, a more sophisticated theoretical framework is expected to develop.

The material durability (physical life) of a building is often different from what it actually lasts (economic life). For example, a building made of modern materials, such as concrete and metal, can stand at least for fifty to sixty years. However, a common observation in Taipei is that the majority of buildings are knocked down, often for redevelopment, far ahead of their physical end. The difference between physical and economic life shall have noticeable impact on urban regeneration, building depreciation, or building values. Despite the policy significance, the economic life of buildings is still under-researched. We analyze a data set of over 10,000 buildings in Taipei City demolished between year 2007 and 2009, with information on age, material, location and floor areas and so on. It is hoped through this analysis to uncover the determinants of the economic life of buildings, and to explore their implication on urban development and land use.

Green infrastructure has an important role in promoting the quality of urban life and supporting its economy. However, as urbanisation increases, green spaces have historically been identified as less valuable then other land uses and investments. The trend for green spaces loss is being addressed by VALUE (ëValuing Attractive Landscapes in the Urban Economyí), an international, interdisciplinary research project funded through the European INTERREG IVB programme for North West Europe. The main aim of the project is to demonstrate the economic value of green infrastructure and to show how to target green investments to maximise comparative benefits to communities. This paper discusses some of the initial results of the research, which assessed the economic value of green infrastructure by employing contingent valuation method and focuses on the decision of intervieweesí ìwillingness to payî for street tree investments. Focus group interviews with residents and business-holders were held in order to establish the application of the CV method and design the questionnaire. The paper reports on approximately 400 face-to-face interviews with both residents and commuters in the Oxford Road area of Manchester-UK. By taking the socio-economic profile and behavioural preferences of inhabitants into consideration, it is suggested that the results will provide a better understanding of how we value green investments economically in urban economy.

Traditionally studies of office occupiers location choice assume firms follow standard behavioural assumptions of neoclassical economics. Firms are thus assumed to be homogeneous and make rational profit maximising decisions. More recently research in this area has taken a more behavioural approach resulting in identifying a number of additional factors and the complex nature of the decision making process. This paper seeks to extend an understanding of commercial location decision making against a backdrop of sustainability and green buildings. It attempts to bring together the two distinct streams of research, namely location decisions of office occupiers and studies examining green buildings and sustainability. The study utilises evidence from one-to-one in-depth interviews with nine CBD office occupiers of sustainable or Green Star buildings. It highlights a range of factors that underpin the decision to occupy Green Star or sustainable offices. The results indicate that firms decisions are influenced by factors including cost, location, availability of accommodation, marketing and company culture and they also confirm that for many organisations sustainability issues play an important additional consideration.

There was a problem for the effectiveness of monetary policy by setting OCR changes to influence house price movements. We find that the announced OCR changes had a close link to the floating or short-term mortgage rate changes, and in contrast house price movements were linked to long-term fixed mortgage rates. Our research further demonstrated that the ratio of overall value of floating to fixed rate mortgages had significantly eased on the effectiveness of monetary policy of OCR changes on house price movements.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects of demographic changes on the housing market in the Netherlands. We look specifically at the different effects of demographic growth and decline on house price levels and changes in a panel data set. In the real estate literature we find that urban growth is not a mirror image of urban decline, due to the durable character of housing. While durability of supply may not be a crucial element of urban dynamics for growing municipalities, it is essential for the nature of a municipality in decline. Due to the durability of housing demographic decline is reflected more in prices than in population. Whenever a city grows buildings would still have a delivery lag and agents would still have an imperfect foresight, resulting in housing price increases untill a new long_run equilibruim is reached. We use a panel data set consisting of variables on housing prices, vacancy, demographics (population, households and household size) and economics (income, education level and unemployment) over 402 Dutch municipalities over the years 1995 to 2009. Population change is entered in the model in a piecewise linear form to allow for differential effects in expanding versus declining municipalities. We estimate that every 1% decrease in population results in a housing price drop of 1.74%. For every 1% increase in population we estimate a 0.25% housing price drop. At first glance it seems strange that an increase in population results in lower housing prices. However, we find it to be more of a supply side effect rather than a demand side (population) effect. Local supply constraints ensure demand being translated more in housing prices than in population. Whenever supply is added (and thus the population grows) housing prices drop.

An earlier paper presented at an ERES conference (Maier et al., 2010) provided evidence that energy efficient improvements in residential properties were not capitalized into prices suggesting that the Austrian residential markets are not efficient. In this paper, we further shed light on this issue by formally testing for the efficiency of the residential markets in Austria. The concept of efficiency has been examined in the literature mainly based on Famaís (1970, 1976) three versions of the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH). Our strategy is to use the weak form and the semi-strong form specifications of the EMH to examine if information about past prices and other market fundamentals are already incorporated into the present prices of residential units. We use aggregate house price data published by the Austrian National Bank. To the best of our knowledge, the present study is the first such analysis for Austrian residential markets.

Nowadays municipalities manifest an increasing difficulty in finding out free areas available for the introduction of public standard services along with private real estate developments. To overcome this difficulty and when private developers canít comply the rule, the City Hall of Turin requests a levy to compensate the missing allocation of public standard services. This solution implies for the City an assessment of the payable quantum. Time after time, as rules changed, the Municipality introduced consecutive proceedings and appraisal tools useful to define the compensative cost. In particular, the Turin City Plan foresees an equivalence between the value of areas bound to public standard services and the expropriation ones. Nevertheless, in 2007, a national act introduced the full market assessment for the expropriation value, causing an excessive charge for private developers, already hit by the economic and financial recession. As a consequence, during the last few years, the City Hall attempted more reasonable solutions, in order to expedite the urban transformation processes, otherwise blocked. This necessity has led to the definition of a ìcase by caseî approach under the supportive activity of the Polytechnic of Turin, by means of a multi annual convention. A first solution chosen by the Turin City was to assess the compensative cost value by means of a DCF-Discounted Cash Flow. The DCF used to considerate all the overcharging cost inputs, specific of each intervention (drainage, demolitions, outside works, other public works, etc). Obviously, this assessment activity revealed trough time its own limits, in terms of time, cost, and process governance. This paper presents the early results of the forthcoming evolution in the compensative costsí evaluation process, aimed at the definition of a range of homogeneous values, depending on the different urban locations. Finally, this standardization activity, useful to guarantee a more transparent criterion as well as a simplification in the valuation process, could help to reach an agreement between the private and public subjects involved in the urban transformations processes. From an operative and methodological point of view the research activity of the Polytechnic of Turin has brought to the analysis of 3.861 census cells of the City. The analysis has attributed, by means of ArchGis software, punctual values to each cell. The distribution of the cell values has been studied to define the perimeter of homogeneous urban zones (nearly 90 sub-areas in total). For each sub-area the study has developed a dynamic Cash-Flow simulation of an hypothetic real estate intervention to calculate the relative value of the buildable area, considered as the compensative cost to be paid by private operators. The results emerged, beyond the operative implications, show, in a methodological perspective, the usefulness of the chosen method, in the mid-long term, to monitor the urban transformation impacts on the real estate values.

The question of housing affordability is an issue affecting millions of people globally but in Australia housing affordability is a relatively recent concern. Home ownership is said to be a fundamental human right. Home ownership in Australia has historically been the hallmark of the nationís reputation as a `fair-goí society for all. The importance of home ownership in Australia goes beyond the need to satisfy the essential needs of shelter security and privacy. Home ownership in Australia has long been viewed as a vehicle for prosperity and a symbol of success. Until recently most working Australians could realistically aspire to home ownership. The opportunity of home ownership is directly linked to housing affordability. The concept of housing affordability is relative and refers to the capacity to enter the housing market; that is, cost and availability. The cost of housing relates to the prosperity of the community, the functioning of the economy, location choices relating to employment opportunities, and transportation issues. Housing also has great significance in the national economy, with its influence on investment levels, interest rates, building activity and employment. Changing economic conditions have increased awareness of the issue of housing affordability both in Australia and globally. This paper addresses the questions; (a) what are the causes of, and (b) what is the extent of the housing affordability problem in Australia? The outcomes of this desk top research study identify the perceived causes and the extent of the problem and whether it is worsening over time.

Germany is facing a far-reaching demographic change which leads to a dwindling population and a change in the age structure. Several studies demonstrated that the demographic change will affect the demand for housing. However, the impact of this development on current prices has not been studied, yet. Since especially institutional investors prefer to invest in cities with a growing population the adjustment of prices to demographic forecasts is a very important and relevant question for portfolio choices. In order to address this question, we calculate the expected growth rate of rents based on a capital-asset pricing model for 125 German cities. If investors take into account the demographic change, the rental growth rate should depend on variables capturing a forecast for future space consumption. Other determinants for property prices (e.g. GDP, unemployment, previous growth, building activity) are also included in the analysis. As it turns, the future demand of living space has a significant impact on current real estate prices. Therefore, it is unlikely to gain extra yields just by investing in growing cities. Furthermore, the model allows for estimation of rental growth rates.

The focus of this study is on the effect of EPC rating on the capital values, rental values and equivalent yields of a sample of UK commercial property assets. As part of a wider objective to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, one of the policy aims of energy labelling of buildings is to provide information to market participants about assetsí energy performance in order to influence their demand. In turn, it is implied that demand shifts will have effects on prices, supply and, ultimately, on greenhouse gas emissions. Since they constitute the terms on which products are exchanged, prices are a fundamental element of markets and, whilst not always perfect, price signals are central to the operation of markets. Research on price effects is, therefore, central to identifying the effectiveness of this type of policy intervention. The study is based upon 708 commercial property assets held in the IPD UK Universe drawn from across all PAS segments. Hedonic regression procedures are used to estimated the determinants of commercial property assetsí yields, capital and rental values.

This paper examines the impact of information technology on retail property business performance in Malaysia. Despite the tremendous development of information technology especially in e-commerce in Malaysia, the question arises as to how far the significance within the retailers in the country and examining the impact to retail property in Malaysia. This survey encompasses each of e-commerce applications: hardware, software and IT applications. In addition personal experiences and opinions were also assessed to get personal overview of IT usage. It is envisaged that this survey would yield beneficial results for the betterment of retail property in Malaysia in the new economy.

According to the US-American standard, various countries throughout the world introduced a national Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) Regime in the last decade. Likewise eleven member states of the European Union (EU) established the legal conditions for REITs and approximately 115 REITs have been founded within the EU since. With this rise of REITs, European analysts and investors are confronted with a puzzling phenomenon regarding the pricing of REIT shares as well: a time-varying spread between market capitalization and fundamental value (determined by net asset value/NAV). Previous research has revealed two different assertions to these premiums/discounts, generally referred to as the rational and the irrational approach. While the first is concerned with the effect of company-specific factors (e. g. size, leverage, focus) on the valuation of REITs, the latter adapts an approach from behavioral finance and assumes NAV-Spreads as a result of noise trading. Since the initial attempt to apply the noise trader hypothesis on this phenomenon, the growing international research on REITs has delivered several new insights regarding different aspects of the approach. We give a broad survey on the related results and incorporate recent adjustments to theory from aligned fields of research. We aim to achieve a more generalized view concerning the impact of noise trading on NAV spreads in REIT pricing.

In Italy the criteria for selecting real estate investments are subjects of discussion between practitioners and academics, also because the Italian real estate funds have grown considerably in recent years in terms of both asset under management size and of number of funds. The aim of paper is to investigate the investment policies and composition choices of Italian retail funds portfolio, looking at the impact on funds performance measured through the Sharpe ratio, widely used in real estate literature. In literature there are a large number of studies that deal with portfolio composition choices and how these have an impact on real estate funds performance (Morri and Erbanni 2008, Baum and Steffan 2009), measured with several Risk adjusted performance indicators such as Sharpe ratio, Treynor ratio, etc. ( Plantinga and de Groot 2001, Scholz and Wilkens 2005, Bacon, 2010 ). The theme of real estate vehicles performance has been widely dealt with at European level (Otten and Bams 2002, Grau-Carles et al. 2009, Giannotti and Mattarocci 2010, Lee and Morri 2009). This paper collocates in these studies, in particular it has drawn on from this latter, since it takes into account the main components of the investment (properties), but differs with reference to the existing literature in considering only patrimonial aspect related to funds investment policies, and the residual investment, trying to prove whether this may affect the fundís performance examined. By using a data set with annual and half-yearly data provided by ìReport of Scenari Immobiliariî, it has been examined a sample of 19 Italian retail funds over the period 2006-2009. The trend of the estimated coefficients has been studied using a multiple cross-section analysis in order to verify whether the weight of several variables changed over time. It has been possible to extract useful information about the relationships between real estate portfolio composition choices and Italian retail funds performance. Indeed, analyzing the geographical and sectorial portfolio composition, the Italian funds tend to the specialization and not to the diversification, mainly investing in properties with target use in office and retail which are located in Northwest and Central areas rather than in the South and in the Islands. The study on the portfolio composition choices has been completed with the analysis of liquidity and bonds that appear to have a lower incidence in the investment policies of the retail funds and then on their performance.

This paper examines whether noise traders generated by self-fulfilling mechanisms cause irrational price volatility. Because their self-fulfilling expectations are based on market sentiment, the regulators need to stabilize the prices through policy announcements or policy tools. This study analyzes noise tradersí self-fulfilling expectation in the Chinaís market where government strongly interfere. We find that asymmetric information may initiate noise traders into self-fulfilling expectation, and government is unsuccessful to control the house price shooting. We further consider the influence of market state switching. It finds that market presents evidence of self-fulfilling expectation, and also increased price volatility counteracts government intervention. Finally, other financial markets except stock are still ineffectiveness by controlling contagion effect.

&quot;The European Council, during the March 2007 meeting, focused on the need of improving energy efficiency in the European Union and asked for a prompt response to the priorities defined in the &quot;&quot;Action plan for energy efficiency&quot;&quot;. The Plan identified the important energy saving potential in building costs and especially in residential building. This way, it is possible to gather that there is still a great unrealized economically convenient potential for energy savings in buildings. Nevertheless, it is really important that this operation follows a correct cost-benefit analysis, based on a method conforming to the new Directive 2010/31/EU. In fact, this Directive states that the measures to improve further the energy performance of buildings should take into account cost-effectiveness. This research is a preliminary approach for the methodological application of the EU Directive, with the intent of giving a model for the member States during the implementation process. In particular, the model approaches issues connected to the &quot;&quot;major renovation&quot;&quot; of existing multi-family residential buildings owned and managed by the State. Starting from the building energy needs, the model evaluates the effects of a building element renovation, pointing at energy savings and socio-economic costs during the intervention lifecycle. The acceptable maximum cost of the renovation intervention is analyzed considering the range of validity of the cost optimal curve for the minimum energy requirement. The report is completed by a selection of case studies taken from the Italian social housing context in order to validate the methodology studied.&quot;

The recent developments in the Italian housing finance are definitely playing a real chance in Italy: the lack of diversified and flexible tools and, above all, the shortage of public resources, led the Italian government to reduce its traditional massive supply of housing. The fact aimed at moving towards more decentralized initiatives as local cooperation between public and private stakeholders. In such a context the governmental act ìPiano Nazionale per líEdilizia Abitativaî, enacted last July 2009, represents now a turning point: it will provide local investors with a national regulation, introducing more flexible financial tools. This paper explains how the present regional public programs (see the ìProgramma Casaî in the Piedmont Regionî) will surely take advantage from the new scheme. Some of the facilities introduced regards the possibility of acquiring, for example, buildings and free land at a fair price, as well as to involve private partners available to earn not more than fair yields from their venture capital. Some major banking foundations (see i.e. the ìFondazione Housing Sociale ñ FHSî in Milan or the ìCompagnia di San Paoloî in Turin) began to invest in private-social housing projects through local programs (free grants, building and management of temporary dwellings, cooperation with the third sector, etc). Their growing experience could be spent by now for supplying housing in partnership with local public bodies. This study reflects the early fallout of actions led by means of the advisory activity (demand-supply analysis, pre-feasibility assessment, management tests) that the SiTI Institute, an instrumental research body founded by the Polytechnic of Turin and the ìCompagnia di San Paoloî Foundation, has developed to support the start up of the forthcoming real estate ethical Fund ìFASP-Fondo Abitare Sostenibile Piemonteî in the local context of the Piedmont Region. Moreover, in order to gather the sense of the Fund (shared by 9 banking Foundations as well as by the Piedmont Region) and to address appropriate social housing interventions within the Piedmont Region, this paper offers an insight of the present housing discomfort in Piedmont, with a particular deepening into the ìrents on incomeî ratio, that, during last 10 years, has been increasing, especially for particular social groups, as it emerges analyzing the recent increasing phenomenon of the family unit fragmentation.

Currently, office vacancy rates in the Netherlands are reaching record breaking levels. Seven million square metres office space is vacant; approximately 14% of a total stock of 47 million square metres. Given the declining demand for office space combined with the impediments related to reducing the office stock, this vacancy level is only expected to rise. The current oversupply on the office market results from both market imperfections and a failing planning system, only partly explained by the well known effects of the hog cycle. A more important explanation is the overproduction of offices that has taken place in the last decade, fuelled by low interest rates and high returns, sustained by a municipal will to develop land, and made possible by governmental belief in free market forces. The emergence of a replacement market, allegedly a market in which good buildings drive out bad buildings (Geraedts and Van der Voordt, 2003), has resulted in a steadily growing collection of obsolete office buildings. Supposedly, these buildings share features that are recognised as being related to obsolescence and depreciation (Baum, 1993; Bottom, 1998; Rem¯y, 2010). Characterising superfluous office buildings is however a difficult task as the odds of vacancy seems to differ along with their location or submarket. Vacancy levels are high on locations that are undesirable to tenants, either as a result of negative location externalities, or because the quality of the local office stock is lacking. In this paper, results from case studies of the Amsterdam and Haarlemmermeer office markets are discussed, showing that the features that can be used to describe obsolete office buildings is to a certain degree linked to local externalities.

It is widely accepted that supply of new houses in the Netherlands has become unresponsive to market conditions. Generally, high and rising house prices are related to lack of construction. Insufficient and unrensposive construction is explained by a lack of land made available for house building. In its turn, scarcity of land is believed to be caused by restrictive spatial planning, which aims at keeping land free from development. In this paper, we will try to look at this problem from a fresh angle, namely the actual developments within the land market and land use, especially in the Netherlands. We will show that the amount of land used for urban functions is steadily rising. If spatial planning is aiming to reduce the amount of land for living and working, it is not particularly successful. Most interestingly, the amount of land available for building is now higher than it has been in the past decades. If fact, in 2006 this amount was 73% higher than in 1996. More recent figures are not yet available. In 2006, the amount of land available for building was 16.5% of the total area occupied by residential buildings. In principle, this should allow an increase of house building. Moreover, many new locations realized in the past fifteen years (the so called VINEX locations) have relatively low densities of only 10 houses per hectare. These locations were designated for housebuilding by the central government in 1993. Overall, it regards 240 sites in 57 municipalities with 265,000 houses realized between 1996 and 2007. In a situation of scarcity of land higher densities would have been expected. So, we tend to conclude that, although house building is not reponsive to high and rising prices, restrictive planning and lack of availability of land is not the only or even the most important explanation of stagnant house building. People who are critical about current planning often imply that more houses should be supplied in lower densities on small-scale locations. However, we believe that the most serious shortages are in the biggest cities and their immediate surroundings. In these areas, it is very difficult to increase supply as it involves building on brownfield sites. In the period from 2000 to 2006, already 43% of all new houses were realized in existing built-up areas. Raising the pace of construction in the main cities is only possible in case of large-scale redevelopment of existing urban areas. So far, this has nowhere been practised. In our view, as long as this consequence will be avoided, there will remain a structural shortage of houses in the most favoured cities of the Netherlands, resulting in high prices. Increasing supply at other locations will not succeed in solving this problem. The main mistake of spatial planning in the Netherlands has been that it, largely as from the 1960ís, has limited the growth of the biggest cities in the country.

This study provides the first evidence on the magnitude of the difference between returns to UK property investors and the returns achieved by the property assets, i.e. the performance gap. Using historical return data for 45 market-segments over the time period 1981-2009 this paper shows that the weighted-average performance gap from 1981 through 2009 is -0.49% per annum, i.e. UK direct property investors as a group have shown greater returns than their underlying investments. However, this average value hides a greater deal of variability in the data which ranges from a negative performance gap of -9.1% to a positive performance gap of +2.1%. That is, estimates of the performance of the UK property market based on time-weighted returns do not reflect the experience of actual property investors as a group. We also provide evidence of a significant positive correlation between capital flows and lagged returns, which can be explained by the proclivity of investors to chase winners, which can then prove disappointing. In addition, we show that the persistence in superior (inferior) returns in the UK property market does not automatically lead to a strong negative (positive) gap. Nonetheless, the more time the segment out performs its peers the better the performance investors achieve and visa versa.

With acceptance of the relationship between energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions and climate change, the built environment is a sector with high potential to lessen overall emissions. Given that the built environment emits around half of all greenhouse gas emissions; it could play a significant role in mitigating global warming. With around 2% of new buildings added to the total stock each year; the scope for reductions lies with adaptation of existing buildings. Many cities aim for carbon neutrality with Melbourne leading the way. Successful adaptation demands that social, technological, environmental, economic and legislative criteria are addressed. Buildings have to meet user and community needs. City centres comprise a range of different type of office stock with regards to age, size, location, height, tenure and quality. All buildings present challenges and opportunities with regards to adaptation and sustainability, and integrating retrofit measures that reduce energy, water and resource consumption. Using a selection of Premium grade office buildings to develop retrofit profiles, this paper addresses the questions; (a) what is the nature of adaptations in relation to Premium quality office building stock in the Central Business District (CBD) and, (b) what is the extent and scope for sustainable retrofits to Premium grade office buildings. Using the Melbourne CBD, adaptation events of Premium grade office buildings were analysed between 1998 and 2008 to identify the potential for integrating sustainability into retrofits projects.

The preliminary phase of complex transformation plans is a very crucial moment, during which several competences have to analyze uncertainties and risks associated with the project and to define important strategic managements as well as concrete solutions. During this phase many and different kind of decisions are to be taken: initially (strategic planning) it is absolutely necessary to structure the design brief, fundamental to clarify clients ñ public or private ñ needs and to define concretely the developmental strategies for the project. Therefore, in a second moment (tactical-operating planning) it is necessary to translate the design brief into practical aspects, pointing out the operational modes required to realize the project, scheduling the pre-construction and construction phases, establishing administrative procedures and identifying roles and responsibilities within the project team. Every country has its own specific procedures and laws that regulate the tactical-operating planning, specifying the phases of process to follow, the necessary professional roles and the types of contract to subscribe in order to realize the project or to supply services. Which are the most crucial phases of the process of the project? Which the most leading roles within the project team? In fact, analyzing the foremost factors that contribute to the project success, it is fundamental consider the importance of every single role involved ñ client, design manager, project manager, contractors, sub-contractors, etc. ñ and their coordination. A rational and correct partitioning of roles and responsibilities guarantees efficiency and often higher qualitative standards. Comparing the Italian and the UK approach, it is possible to underline some differences related to the setting of the projects preliminary phase, analyzing both the procedures and the project team management. The aim of the present paper is to compare the Italian and the UK practices, in order to underline the aspects that could improve the Italian approach during the strategic and tactical-operating planning of complex transformation plans.

The paper analyses housing investment patterns in 127 German cities with annual data from 1990 to 2010. The empirical estimation is conducted with a panel analysis based on Tobinís Q theory, which says that any investment is a function of the Q ratio. Our marginal Q ratio captures the price-relation between resale and new dwellings, as well as the relation of dwelling rents between old and new houses. Q is higher, with higher dwelling stock prices and with higher rents for new constructed dwelling units. With a higher Q, more investments are to be expected, which are measured with dwelling permits and dwelling starts. The results of the fixed effect model show that Tobinís Q explains up to 20 percent of the variation in dwelling investments. Individual regressions yield great differences across cities in respect to the coefficients of determination. We therefore run and discuss several correction methods and alternative investment measures by integrating additional data on population and adjacent communities. These controls and modifications can improve the models substantially, but the differences across communities remain unchanged.

This paper analyses the relevance of management contracts for the finance of hotel projects and delivers a scheme for decision making for the question. Using modern approaches to finance different forms of contracts between the landlord and the hotel-management can be seen as a continuation between debt finance ñ the case of pure lease contract ñ and equity finance ñ the case of a pure management contract. Hybrid forms of contract can therefore be seen a mezzanine form of finance. It is shown, the optimal lease or management contract depends on the liquidity of the location and the standard and type of services delivered to the guest, being usually the category of the hotel the proxy for the ladder. Due to the risk situation of the management contracts they have a direct impact on the project finance of the hotel-project.

The housing standard is very high in Sweden and there is a strong legislative framework protecting tenants. It therefore came as a surprise when a number of rundown and badly maintained estates were given attention in the media. In this article we try to explain how this could happen in the specific case of a part of the HerrgÂrden area in Malmˆ. The explanation is split into two parts. The first question is how the landlord could attract tenants even though rents were higher and quality lower than in neighboring areas. Several contributing factors are discussed: Many households live on welfare and do not pay with their own money, some households value the ìno questions askedî policy of the landlord and engage in illegal subletting and other illegal activities and, finally, the real choice for many households were limited as they were new to the country and as there is a housing shortage in Malmˆ with queues to more attractive areas. The second question is how it can be a profitable strategy for the property owner to neglect maintenance as it reduces the property value considerably. Two ìexit strategiesî are discussed. The first is that it might be possible to sell the properties to a high price to some ìbigger foolî that are willing to pay too much for the properties. The second is that the managers and decision makers in the company are playing with other peoples¥ money, and that they knew that the strategy could end in bankruptcy with major losses of capital. Examples of both these strategies are presented in the article. The policy conclusion is that a stricter property management legislation is needed where the municipality and not only the tenants can take initiative to action against a landlord and also that is should be possible to force a landlord to sell the property when there are serious mismanagement of a housing estate and other measures have not helped.

With an increased focus on international property investment, the role of emerging property markets in delivering portfolio benefits has attracted considerable attention. In particular, the European emerging property markets (eg: Russia, Poland, Turkey, Greece) account for 11 countries, with 1% of the global listed property companies market capitalisation. This paper considers the role of European emerging market property companies in a portfolio, assessing the risk-adjusted performance and portfolio diversification benefits over 2007-2010. This performance is benchmarked against the European developed market property companies (15 countries), as well as globally and with the respective stockmarkets. The property investment implications are also highlighted.

International property investment has taken on increased significance in recent years, with the European property markets being a traditional source of international property investment opportunities for institutional investors. This paper assesses eleven (11) major European direct property markets ,including UK, France,German and Netherlands, over 2001-2010 to assess the risk-adjusted performance and portfolio diversification benefits of these markets. The property investment implications are also highlighted,including EU convergence.

Research in the field of real estate business is growing very fast. In this situation a research structure is necessary to avoid duplication of effort and to create deep synergy. A lot is written on what real estate management is and what not and as well how to classify the related research. Furthermore, the organisation of real estate research units often needs to follow a cassification. Without a doubt, taxonomic top-down approaches to break down research in a unique way have failed. More promising are cluster frameworks. But defining clusters is far away from trivial and also often far away from reality. Especially Due to the complexity of real estate business the cluster centers and boundaries are hard to define. A possible way out is Wittgensteinís idea of family resemblance (1953). Because this idea is often discussed if classification processes are polythetic, an initial proposal of an application is provided. To create a simple and distinct typology the attributes of the research results need to be carefully selected. ÑReal estate business functionì, Ñsegment of value chain ì, Ñtype of real estateì and of course Ñresearch methodologyì are prevalent. The paper shows that, in contrast to common approaches, the attributes Ñresearch subjects perspectiveì and the Ñbehavioural assumptionsì contain high explanatory power.

The increasing role of retail investors in the real estate vehicle market makes necessary to study simple return/risk measures that could be easily understood also by not financial skilled investors. Measures frequently used in the asset management industry are the Risk Adjusted Performance Measures scale independent. Studies available in literature evaluate the fitness of these measures in order to select best investment opportunities under the simplified assumption of the normality of results achieved. Looking at the US market, the paper studies the performance of REITs for the time period 1999-2010 and verifies that the assumption of the normality of the performance achieved is not satisfied. Demonstrated the limits of this assumption, the paper compare ranking based on Sharpe ratio with those achieved using different RAP measure constructed using different risk measures that do not assume the normality of the returnsí distribution. Results demonstrate that rankings obtained different RAP measures are not always coherent even if they are correlated. RAP measures constructed using the maximum drawdown and the VaR risk measures allow to identify rakings that are more stable over time respect to the Sharpe index. Looking at the determinants of the RAP value, both debt and volume variables affect the ranking constructed. For the liabilities the main feature that affect the ranking is the mismatch between short term assets and debts while for the volume the more significant variables are those that consider the volume adjusted for the bid-ask spread. Considering the determinants of the RAP measures, we cannot identify any significant change in the ranking determinants on the basis of the risk measure choice. Finally we evaluate the relevance of the RAP rankings in selecting the investment opportunities comparing the results of a highly diversified portfolio with those achieve by a portfolio concentrated only on top REITS identified using different RAP measure. Results demonstrates that normally the choice to consider more complex RPA measure allow to achieve a significant increase of the performance achieved by a REITsí portfolio.

Real estate is an important asset class for Dutch investors. This paper gives more information on the Dutch real estate investment market and the different segments within that market. The approach to determine the market size is bottom up, based on public information on real estate assets and transactions. In addition to the determination of the market by the real estate assets, information is given on the equity and debt within the Dutch real estate market. In the past the Dutch institutional investors held large direct real estate portfolios, but currently their direct real estate holdings are decreasing. This paper also gives information about this activity of their real estate investments. Despite their decreasing direct real estate portfolios they are investing more indirect and international. To get a clear overview of their real estate investments activity as a whole these investments are included. Besides the size of the traditional real estate investment market also the largest real estate categories which arenít currently seen as part of the investment market are mentioned. The total market size gives more information for coverage of IPD indices. The market size is also important for the weight of the Dutch real estate returns in European and global indices. Those indices are weighted on the actual market sizes instead of the real estate measured by IPD. International investors are interested in figures on the total real estate investment market as well preferring investments in large and liquid real estate markets.

The Green Building movement has gained considerable strength in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) in recent years. Green Building Councils have been created in almost all countries and various certification schemes have been introduced. Many developers who are active in the region have joined the Green Building councils. Also, they have started to take into consideration the corresponding certificates and standards. Despite of the strong interest in Green Building certificates in CEE, there is little evidence of the value such a certificate has in these markets. Contrary to the US, where enough transactions of certified buildings have accumulated so that hedonic studies could demonstrate the positive effect of Green Building certificates on rent levels and transaction prices (Eichholtz et al., 2010), the numbers of actual transactions are still too small in CEE for such an analysis. Therefore, the current study uses a contingent valuation approach and confronts respondents with hypothetical choices. The paper presents the conceptual framework and first empirical results for a contingent valuation study in two CEE countries: Poland and Austria. The framework of the study is the office market. Based on a series of background interviews in both countries we develop a web-based contingent valuation instrument that confronts decision makers in companies that are large office tenants with hypothetical options for office alternatives. One of the characteristics taken into consideration is the availability of a Green Building certificate. It is the ultimate goal of the analysis to extract from the choices of the respondents the financial value that they implicitly assign to a Green Building certificate. Eichholtz P.,N. Kok, and J.M. Quigley (2010). Doing Well By Doing Good? Green Office Buildings. American Economic Review 100(6), 2010: 2494-2511.

The undergraduate BSc degree in property studies offered by the School of Construction Economics (CEM) at the University of the Witwatersrand (WITS) currently does not have work place experience or internship as a curriculum requirement. Practical work experience has been included in numerous real estate degree programmes at various universities around the world. Given the numerous work opportunities that graduates have when entering the real estate profession, the value of work place experience as a curriculum requirement may assist the property student to decide upon a suitable career path and also make that student more valuable to potential employers when graduating. Work place experience or an internship programme will allow for the integration of theoretical concepts learned in the classroom environment with practical application in the work place. This may also ensure that the graduate is able to find employment far sooner than without having the work place experience and improve the value of the graduate to potential employers. Final year students and recent graduates were surveyed to assess their views regarding the property profession generally and more specifically the potential value of work place experience as a formal curriculum requirement. Certain employers were also surveyed to assess the importance and value of their involvement in practical work place programmes for students. A comparison was also made with certain other universities who have recently implemented a practical work place assignment as a curriculum requirement.

The aim of this research is to investigate the effects of the different managerial structures on the capital structure choice and financing decisions in thin real estate markets such as Asian REITs market. Asian REITs operate in different market environment than its US and Europe counterparts. A thin market, different ownership and managerial structures are some attributes of this market. Most of Asian REITs still adopt an externally managed strategy. This separation of ownership leads to agency conflict and higher information asymmetry. A thin market, in addition, is associated with fewer trading transactions, illiquid and higher volatility. This paper set sights to observe how the different managerial forms of REITs impact on its capital structure decisions in a thin market environment. It will also examine the relevance of the existing capital structure theories in explaining the financing decisions of the two different REIT managerial structures after the consideration of the existence of the free cash flow. Factors that are tested include the firms attributes (e.g. market volatility), leverage factors (e.g. profitability) and capital raising factors. Residual income approach is used to investigate the level of free cash flow. Standard OLS regression is applied to show the significance of the factors. Multinomial Logistic (MNL) regression is used to show the relevance of the capital structure theory. These regression analyses are carried out across Asian REITs from period 2006-2010. Past results seem to show that now REITs in general tends to adapt market timing behavior capital structure theory.

This paper addresses the issue of defining prime offices within the context of three European countries. In so doing, it draws from literature, a recent survey of European lease practices (Atkinson-Baldwyn, 2011), and a desktop study of the current usage of the term in London, Paris and Frankfurt. The paper will demonstrate that, whilst the term prime is used frequently, it is used imprecisely and without shared understanding. The disparate usage in existing literature, explored in the paper, is indicative of the different criteria employed. The findings of a wide-ranging study of lease practices within three Western European capitals reinforced the apparent lack of agreement over a definition. This calls into question the use of prime when applied in comparative analysis. Further, the use of the term may also be affected by the property cycle, as position within the economic cycle affects what researchers and investors regard as prime property. This paper argues the need for general understanding of the term prime in the office markets of Western Europe and the requirement to develop a common framework. Findings There is apparent concensus regarding the difficulties involved in creating a standard definition of a prime office for Europe. Differences include the influence of culture, climate, local working practice and economic maturity. Additionally, lack of shared understanding of sustainability factors and their contribution to the definition of sustainable buildings further reinforces the differences. For example the market requirements for a prime office of air conditioning or grey water re-cycling may relate to country-specific regulatory environments or local adoption of ëgreení technologies. The effect of sustainability factors may have increased in importance within notions of prime due to wider corporate cognisance of broader social responsibility and the triple bottom line of economic, environmental and social sustainability, which have been argued to impact on building choice decisions. The paper concludes that a shared understanding of prime within local or convergent European markets will assist appropriate analysis and aid transparency within the operation of commercial letting and sales markets.

This paper describes the development of a rent index for Flanders, Belgium. This annual index, referred to as the huurprijsindex (rent index), is designed to detect changes in the rent of the overall stock of rental homes. We use the matched model methodology based upon repeat tenancy agreements, analogous to Case and Shillerís geometric repeat sales model, to estimate the rent index. We use recoded data on the tenancy agreements of nearly five hundred thousand rental homes; more than 30,000 representing repeat agreements between 1990 and 2010. The accuracy of the index is determined using the 95% confidence interval. Given our target (a geometric mean index value) and the characteristics of the dataset (large but without property characteristics) our repeat tenancy agreements method seems to be adequate for calculating a rent index for Flanders.

The Government of Ghana since independence has tried various strategies in a bid to provide adequate, quality and affordable housing for citizens. This has involved different policies from direct intervention to current contemplation towards self-help mechanisms. The past results have however, been mixed if not a failure. The housing problem therefore continues to increase overwhelmingly, both in quantity and quality, and particularly for the low/moderate income group. The critical question is to what extent has these policy approaches failed, and in what ways can innovative design solutions contribute to solving the housing problem? What evidence exist, if at all, of the difference innovation in design can make? This paper examines these question using the case of the low/moderate income group in Ghana through a review of existing literature and personal observation. As the way forward, the paper proposes the need to reinforce policy decisions with innvoations in design strategies - solutions which empower residents to meet their own housing needs incrementally over time and in response to their particular requirements. The paper contributes to understanding the factors which may contribute to the success or failure of housing solutions and in particular for the low/moderate income in develping countries. It also contributes to understanding how design innovation can contribute to enhancing the housing quality of the low/moderate income residents.

A major flood event has both short and long term impacts on residential property markets. Depending on the severity of the flood, flood height and the time taken for the water to recede, there will be varying impacts on the residential property market from both a sales and a rental perspective. This paper tracks the residential property markets across both flood free and flood prone suburbs of Brisbane prior to and following the 2011 floods. Trends in relation to property sales listings, property rental listings and property sales are tracked and compared on the basis of suburbs that experienced flooding and those that were flood free. A more detailed analysis will also show the more direct impact of flooded streets compared to non flooded streets in the same location

Since the years 80 real estate investments are a cross border activity. To day the volume of international investments in the portfolios of Dutch Pensionfunds is about 57 % of the total investments, compared with Gemeany 35 % and teh UK 11 %. Expectations are that diversification of investments across different countries shall grow the coming years. That makes it more necessary to look critically to the reported results of the performance analyses of the concerned properties. At the moment the achieved returns are reported based on the national cultural way the properties are managed and the operational results are justified. Nevertheless there are great differences between those modes of operation. By that an achieved TRR in The Netherlands is not quite the same of one achieved in the UK, Germany, Sweden or France per example. In this paper the results are presented of a survey focused on this issue and based upon the comparison of leased office buildings in named five countries at property as well as portfolio level. It is a plea for introducing one standard for the analyses of pan-European portfolios, beside keeping the national traditions for the home market. So the consequences of cross border investments in real estate can be made more transparant for the international investors.

Starting with a diversified international real estate portfolio by using the portfolio theory this research paper shoes a pragmatic approach to transform the findings into a real allocation process for finding a practical target portfolio for direct investments. However, the literature of the last 20 years shoes a high level of diversifications effects by using the portfolio theory also for real estate portfolios. But there is still a dilemma to transform these results into a daily allocation processes. The paper gives an outlook on the practicable application of the results using Markowitz theory in consideration of the uncertain and imperfect real estate markets. In practical considerations there are still problems regarding the properties of direct real estate investments and their markets, for example the characteristics of properties, real estate market situations and sizes. On the basis of empirical statistical tests ñ based on real estate total return indices ñ this papers aims to find a solution to overcome these difficulties. The new transformation process ñ as a result of this paper ñ is using clustering methods and different return calculations for having more possibilities for choosing the suitable components for an existing real estate portfolio. With a top down to bottom up procedure according to a countercurrent principle it is possible to find properties witch are suitable in practice.

Industrial areas are a prime theme in the urban policy debates in the Netherlands. From an economic perspective, Dutch industrial areas are important and successful. However, from a spatial perspective, several problems arise. In recent years, a lot of new areas have been developed on the relative scarce Dutch territory, and a large share of the existing areas has a low and decreasing spatial quality. In the current policy debates, several solutions are proposed for the occurring problems. In this article, we pose that these solutions will not have an optimal effect unless they are generated from a total systems perspective. The market for industrial areas functions as a complex system, in which interventions will only be successful when the underlying processes support them. In this article, the Dutch market for industrial areas is regarded and reproduced as a complex system, employing the principles of the System Dynamics theory. Using the developed System Dynamics model, effects of possible interventions are calculated, and recommendations are presented for optimizing the Dutch industrial area market.

While academic mainstream urban design theory is caught in a paradigmatic debate concerning normative and positive theories, practice research in the field has focused on the added value of quality design. The purpose is to promote, within the wide range of stakeholders, the concept that quality sells. Most of the research in this area is characterised by a descriptive approach based on best practice examples and lack of empirical evidence. This paper aims to fill this gap by investigating the impact of quality-led design on the value of commercial office properties in the urban core of a UK city. In line with mainstream urban economic theory and suggestions from previous research on the value of urban design, the research underpinning this paper uses Hedonic Price Modelling (HPM) to assess the contribution that high quality urban design makes to office rents. In the quest for quantifying quality a new set of Ñurban scale quality design_ variables is specified and each variable estimated for a unique dataset of property transactions. Another novelty relates to the variables that utilise geospatial analysis with the aim of integrating quantitative methods in urban design research and practice.

The Joint European Support for Sustainable Investment in City Areas (JESSICA) is a policy initiative of the European Commission developed with the European Invest-ment Bank (EIB) and supported by the Council of Europe Development Bank (CEB). The primary objective of the JESSICA initiative is the use of EU Structural Funds through financial engineering mechanisms instead of grants. Managing Authorities of EU Member States have the option of employing part of their Structural Fund allocations through financial engineering instruments supporting urban developments. These instruments are Urban Development Funds (UDFs). UDFs can invest in PPPs and other projects included in integrated plans for sustainable urban development. Optionally, Holding Funds can also be implemented. They select and invest in UDFs on behalf of Managing Authorities. In this paper we discuss the key dimensions leading to an efficient design of Urban Development Funds: (1) the business strategy, (2) the feasible financial instruments and (3) efficient governance structures. By combing all key dimensions, we can derive possible prototypes for Urban Development Funds. We then compare these potential prototypes to the current implementation process of UDFs in the European Member States. The empirical analysis, which forms part of a long-term research approach (2010 to 2013) of the European Investment Bank, not only gives an overview on this emerging fund asset class in the Member States. Furthermore, it also delivers first insights concerning the strength and weaknesses of the JESSICA initiative for the private European real estate market. The derived potential prototypes as well as the recently implemented Urban Development Funds show that the JESSICA initiative could be an interesting financing alternative for private real estate investors and developers in Europe, provided that their development projects fulfill certain eligibility requirements.

An former enamelling plant from the 1920`s economic depression, became in the 60`s no longer economically viable. Various subsequently users accelerated the downfall of the inner city plant area. In 2010 a semi state development agency ñ the OFB ñ a daughter company of the State Bank of Hessian, Germany, was asked to decontaminate the area and find a new economic live for the inner city site. Three quarters of the derelict pant area were demolished and an lime stone faced early 1920`s building was retained and became a listed building, to commemorate the industrial heritage. Therefore listed building funds were made available to help towards a new life cycle for the building. To prevent a further sprawling out of shopping centres at the outskirts of the city, it was decided to cater for the inner city shopping needs of the inhabitants in the inner city. The area is close to the railway station and linked to the inner city ring road for easy access. To foster all the possibilities for development, the client decided to get a certificated building of the German DGNB ñ Deutsche Gesellschaft f¸r Nachhaltiges Bauen ñ German Society for Sustainable Buildings ñ a silver grade certificate. In the lecture this case study of the sustainable measures will be delivered.

Although properties are not an element of core-business in non-property-companies a significant amount of capital is locked-up in corporate real estate (CRE) by European firms. This awareness gave in the early 1990s the impetus for the trend to a much more professional Corporate Real Estate Management. Indicators like cost efficiency and space efficiency were getting more and more important and led to ìguidelinesî by the increasing shareholder value concept. In the end, the perspective of the owner dominated the Corporate Real Estate business for a certain period of time. That this dominance of the owner-perspective over the users-perspective has been tailed off was already be shown in a previous study called ìCREM 2010: What is the role played by the users?î in the last year by Sonja Weiland and Andreas Pfn¸r. This survey showed that Corporate Real Estate Managers realized the importance of users` satisfaction with their working environment. It is estimated by the questioned Corporate Real Estate Managers that the leverage of a better working environment of the employee productivity is roundabout 13 %. Their main objective - shown by this survey - was the best possible support and service for the real estate users to facilitate their performance. The space-users shall be enabled to work efficiently and effectively. For this reason, the impact on corporate success by a corporate real estate is additionally pushed by a professional user-orientation. The study being presented is based on the data collected for the previous study CREM 2010: 97 Corporate Real Estate Managers of German companies with more than 10.000 employees were questioned. But the focus of this follow-up study is shifting from identifying the status quo to analysing the coherencies. Therefore multivariate methods are chosen to examine correlations between variables (e.g. characteristics of the company, satisfaction of the users, sourcing decisions, etc.), to identify factors affecting the success and to identify clusters of management strategies in order to give a hint for development potential. Aim of this follow-up study is to analyze the significance of user-related corporate real estate management for the employeesí productivity. Finally a target-concept of managing and controlling the real estate portfolio will be created considering user-orientation as part of it.

Computer Assisted Mass Appraisal (CAMA) utilising hedonic and spatial analysis is well established in the field of property valuation for taxation purposes. In this role these approaches are deployed on large datasets of property attribute data and use prices in a sold sample to estimate value in the general population. With the emergence of the green agenda, much effort has been put into improving the energy efficiency of housing. A key policy has been the introduction of energy ratings which have become mandatory in several jurisdictions, with the aim of informing market choices. Many jurisdictions have also made efforts to improve knowledge of energy efficiency of housing stock, to better target funding and awareness campaigns aimed at encouraging upgrades. Some jurisdictions are now seeking to reward / encourage such activity via tax incentives. This research is based upon a project to bring together several large databases of property based data, held by a tax authority, an energy saving trust and a major social housing provider to establish a basis for statistical analysis. The aim is to estimate the energy efficiency of the entire housing stock of a jurisdiction using the type of attribute data commonly collected for taxation and energy management purposes. The research utilises regression analysis and spatial analysis to understand the pattern of energy inefficiency and to identify hot-spots of poor performance. The aim is to provide a methodology which may be broadly deployed to gain a deeper understanding of energy efficiency in the housing stock and to provide a data test bed to model the performance potential of a range of potential policy options.

This research is based on principles of corporate real estate and facilities management to understand the current philosophy of work and life of office users. Modern workplace management influences modern corporations to manage their office spaces more economically while supporting office users to be more productively. The survey in offices across the UK confirmed that office users perceive about office satisfaction in different ways. Furthermore, this study tried to compare the existing workplace practice with the one preferred by the users. Based on the offices involved in this study, end-user requirements can potentially help saving 20% of the existing annual occupancy costs.

This paper is about the valuation of hotel real estate in Germany regarding the loss of market shares of pure lease contracts for hotel properties in favour of management or hybrid forms of operating agreements. Based on the theory of SOTELO, that lease contracts can be interpreted as financing contracts, it can be shown that the reason for the diversification of operating agreements can be explained by different forms of financing depending on the characteristics of the hotel property and the liquidity of the market for operating agreements. While pure lease contracts can be seen as debt financing, hybrid forms of operating agreements equal mezzanine financing, as well as management contracts are like equity financing. This diversification will on the one hand lead to an insufficient basis for gaining comparable leases as well as comparable cap rates for hotel real estate with the effect that the valuation of hotel properties by the standardised German income approach won¥t be preference free anymore. On the other hand, it can be shown that, assuming a lease contract for valuing a hotel property that is ideally operated by a management contract will result in wrong assumptions due to different forms of financing and probably not lead to the market value. Closing the gap in the German hotel real estate valuation the aim was a valuation method that will allow preference free hotel real estate valuation without comparable leases and comparable cap rates coincident with the German Valuation Guidelines. Therefore regional and national empirical analyses of hotel property purchase prices, based on the hedonic theory, were conducted. Based on the results of the regional analyses, a hotel valuation system was developed and verified regarding the accuracy of estimate. It was shown that a preference free valuation can be performed on this basis that is in line with the German Valuation Guidelines.

A lot of social, economic and physical problems are found within the 40 problem Districts (Enforcing Districts) located across the Netherlands. A possible way to tackle some of the safety and employment problems is the application of Mix-Use strategy proposed by the Dutch government. Within this research project the perceptions on what Value Characteristics of a district should be realized when applying Mix-Use in an Enforcing District are collected. The value perceptions of the Inhabitants, Housing Corporations and applicable Entrepreneurs for Mix-Use are brought together to one ranking list by the use of the Analytical Hierarchy Process. This ranking list then provides the Value Proposition for the district which, when realized, ensures a bigger chance of success for Mix-Use, the tackling of Enforcing District problems and creating and capturing value for the district. On the basis of the value proposition, a business model is developed to illustrate a win-win situation for the enforcing district projects.

The Sales Comparison Method (SCM) is the most widely used method of property va luation, residential properties in particular. With transaction data becoming more and more accessible, the trend will continue. However, SCM is criticized for its subjectivity with inconsistent prediction. The main contributor of subjectivity is informal implementation procedure of the method.Variants of SCM have emerged focusing on implementation details with subjectivity minimized or eliminated. The grid adjustment method has formalized the procedure with optimal or non-optimal route. Spatial autoregressive error model formalized the procedure in addition to estimating the spatial error dependence in a dataset. There are methods that focused on weighting of comparables only. This paper reviews SCM and its variation of implementation, discuss their strengths and weaknesses and recommends modifying the grid adjustment methodas a new implementation procedure of SCM for the country that may minimizes subjectivity.

This paper analyzes the relationships between local and global securitized real estate markets, but also between securitized real estate markets and common stock markets. First, the volatility transmissions across markets are examined using an asymmetric t-BEKK specification of their covariance matrix. Second, correlations from that model and tail dependences estimated using a timevarying copula framework are analyzed in order to assess whether different dynamics underlie the comovements in the whole distribution and those in the tails. Third, we assess market contagion by testing for structural changes in the tail dependences. We use data for the U.S., the U.K. and Australia for the period 1990-2010 as a basis for our analyses. Spillover effects are found to be the largest in the U.S., both domestically and internationally. Further, comovements in tail distributions between markets appear to be quite important. We also document different dynamics between the conditional tail dependences and correlations. Finally, we find evidence of market contagion between the U.S. and the U.K. markets following the subprime crisis.

Over A$22 billion of new equity capital has been raised by way of rights issues by 71 Australian listed property entities (including A-REITs) during 2001 to 2009. While the rights offerings raise important equity capital for the issuers, this study investigates whether investors have profited from the rights offerings. The theoretical ex-rights share price is calculated for these issuers to find that on average subscribers have actually suffered a decrease in wealth. This study examines factors that might influence this percentage difference to the theoretical ex-rights share price following rights issue subscriptions. The findings suggest that issues that have a greater proportion that is underwritten and those with a higher risk profile offer a greater likelihood that investors will increase their wealth from the issue. There is some evidence also, regarding A-REITs, that larger discounts may reduce the likelihood of investors increasing their wealth from the issue.

Property investment markets are cyclical, but each cycle is different; whilst it is possible to learn from previous events, similarities can be deceiving. In the late 1980s commercial property values in the UK fell by up to 50% with levels of over-renting reaching over 80% in some cases (Baum & Crosby, 1995). This led to a critical re-appraisal of the adequacy of valuation methods (e.g. Crosby and Goodchild, 1992), which exposed technical and methodological limitations of established practice (Adams and Booth, 1996). Today, the scenario looks similar. Significant falls in commercial rental values have left investors exposed to tenantsí covenants once more and clients are once again questioning the accuracy of valuations (LSH, 2009). However, these similarities are deceptive and approaches advocated in the early 1990s require readjustment. This paper presents a critical review of market dynamics in relation to the current economic environment, legal and practice context, informed by literature, interviews and a questionnaire, in order to re-appraise appropriate approaches to the valuation of over-rented properties. This paper will explore documented key market changes in lease practice and landlord and tenant relationships (for example, French & Jones, 2010) which impact on valuation together with the impact of low interest rate (Cross, 2010) and the void of bank financing which impact risk and return aspirations. These factors and the requirement for valuers to mark-to-market robustly and expeditiously (French, 2010; RICS & IPD, 2008) combine to create the need to once more re-appraise approaches to investment valuation methodology, including the approach to risk and uncertainty.

Affordable housing has been built in many countries all over the world. Yet the term ëaffordable housingí is interpreted and defined very differently despite a shared focus on housing the less well-off population group. In China, ëaffordable housingí was firstly introduced by the central government in 1991, and it quickly received enormous attention in both policy and practice in the past three decades. Although it is regarded as a direct approach of government intervention to assist lower income family housing needs, its official definition changed together with its development scales. Moreover, developers as well as local government officials have used their own definitions of ëaffordable housingí in housing policies and projects at local level. Thus, affordable housing in China connotes a wide range of meanings even though there is a definition from the central government. This paper examines the interpretation of affordable housing in Chinaís practical world, by using Nanjing as a case study. Data is collected from statistical yearbooks, government policy documents, as well as semi-structured interviews. These interviews involved property developers, municipal government officials and district government officials, and were conducted during the period 12. 2009 ñ 12. 2010. The study found that in addition to provide living spaces for low- and middle-income groups, which is a main policy goal shared among the countries, the Chinese government had a different expectation from ëaffordable housingí. Chinaís central government wants to use affordable housing as one of the means to establish a Chinese housing system, to stimulate the growth of the related industries, and to promote economic growth of the whole country. Local governments have their own ways of interpreting the term ëaffordable housingí, characterized by a deviation from the official policy statements but embedded in local politics and economy. The developersí interpretation is still different, reflecting the profit seeking behaviour in a transitional economy. Understanding of these key interpretations is critical for affordable housing to benefit its target population.

The Estonian real estate market has experienced a decline and stabilisation phase and started on a new rise. In the real estate market decline phase it was discovered that the prices of low quality objects have fallen the most or these objects are still unsold. This paper seeks to investigate the opinions of market participants about the real estate quality and make a hierarchy of quality indicators under the new real estate boom. The object of analysis is the housing and office market. Real estate quality is assessed on the basis of the Quality Rating System, according to what a quality grade characterises the objectís competitiveness to be attractive for similar type of investors or tenants. Quality grade for a real estate object is determined on the basis of its income potential, taking into consideration the sustainability of the object, i.e. every factor has to be assessed based on the principles of sustainable development and saving use. Income potential is evaluated on the basis of the following attributes: location and use of the plot, quality of construction and real estate management. Valuation of each attribute is based on the factors that influence the respective attribute. The choice of factors influencing the attributes depends on the type of object to be valued: residential or office. Analysis of a real estate object identifies the hierarchy of factors that influence the quality of living and office space, assessed separately for investors, tenants and real estate appraisers, and the results are compared with the past assessments of the real estate quality. To evaluate the hierarchy of the factors influencing the quality grade of the real estate object, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method is used.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), far from being a recent phenomenon, has a long history. However it has grown from the individually inspired philanthropy of the Cadburys, Titus Salt and Robert Gordon, for example, to become part of the corporate offer addressing all the stakeholders in a company. Behaving sustainably is an integral part of CSR and most property companies have some kind of environmental statement that describes their commitment to the green agenda. These are set in the context of an industry that sees sustainability as essentially a cost item, since the benefits of investment accrue mainly to occupiers rather than landlords. This paper seeks to measure the impact upon the performance of listed U.K property companies of their CSR policies and environmental statements using their adjusted share price as a performance measure. CSR policies and environmental statements are scored using incidence analysis within their annual reports in the public domain to establish the weight placed upon CSR issues in this formal documentation. The CSR index generated, together with other firm-level control variables, is set against a price index adjusted for market movements to determine whether the quality of CRS has any impact on property companiesí performance and whether shareholders are willing to pay price premium for the high quality of CRS proxied by self- constructed CSR index.

German open-ended retail funds have shown an internationally unique smooth performance over the last five decades. In recent times however, some funds have yielded very negative returns, which is in sharp contrast to the general market development. Especially funds that were forced to liquidate performed worst. The paper compares the performance of those funds under liquidation to funds with similar investment strategies that continue their business. The analysis starts from fund performance after financing, liquidity holdings and fees. In a second step, property performance is analyzed on country level, and finally single asset performance is taken into account. As all information is retrieved from publicly available sources, value changes of single assets between 2006 and 2010 can be analyzed without any confidentiality limitations. Since German open-ended funds have two thirds of their assets invested outside of Germany in 28 major real markets, findings are interesting for the comparison of German versus international valuation practice. Results show that fund liquidation has a strong negative impact on appraised property values. Evidence is presented that property values have been overstated in the years before the liquidation.

The adequate measurement of real estate risk is of utmost importance for asset management and real estate portfolio management. Most real estate academics agree that volatility is inappropriate for that purpose. However, it is still a favored measure of many practitioners and academics due to its simplicity and because the perfect alternative has yet to be found. We provide plausible reasons for the proposition that volatility should not be used for measuring the risk of real estateóneither within its asset class, nor in a multi-asset environment. They are based on an extensive literature overview, expert interviews, and new empirical evidence from Germany. Furthermore, we discuss whether qualitative risk measures might be more appropriate and provide some requirements for better real estate risk measures. Our paper is an update on earlier work on the same subject. Compared to the first version we improved both the data quality and the methodology. Instead of data from two German real estate portfolios we used IPD data for 939 properties from 1996-2009. We performed several analyses, mainly tests on the normality of real estate returns. Furthermore, by following an approach by Lizieri and Ward (2001), we also fitted alternative theoretical distributions to the observed frequency distributions. The results are very much in line with the previous results: The returns of direct real estate investments in Germany are not normally distributed, in fact, most of the return series follow a logistic distribution, hence, the volatility does not adequately capture the real estate risk.

Management of multi-owner housing is never straightforward because of the need for collective homeowner action. Mancur Olson suggests that a rational individual will not participate in collective action which provides no positive net benefit for him or her. Based on this premise, it would seem that rationality drives homeowners to free-ride on othersí efforts and that, as a result, no collective action will take place. However, some homeowners do actively participate in housing management, and it is worthwhile to examine why some participate and others do not. Building on the wide-ranging applications of the collective interest model (CIM) in explaining political participation and environmental activism, this paper expands its relevance to the arena of housing management. The explanatory analysis which is based on the findings of a structured questionnaire survey in Hong Kong corroborates the central propositions of the CIM and provides a theoretical account of homeownersí willingness to participate (WTP) in housing management. In brief, the WTP is a function of beliefs about personal and group efficacy, the value of the collective good, and the selective benefits and costs of participation. These findings have far-reaching implications for the formulation of government policies promoting homeownersí active involvement in housing management in Hong Kong and other megacities.

This paper reports on the first empirical findings of a RICS ET supported project aimed at establishing data which links the financial performance of standing commercial property investments within a range of European property portfolios, with their sustainability characteristics. The conceptual model for the work was established last year in a series of working papers including a presentation at ERES 2010. It is important that this model is not reliant on any building being analysed having a ëgreení certification as few buildings in continental Europe are so rated and rating systems where used vary in their composition. The project is in response to the requirement for investors, many of whom have now adopted a policy of moving towards responsible investment, to better understand the financial implications of their adopted strategies. Since the authors, a team from Danube Krems University and Kingston University, set up the project last year, investors from across Europe have supplied data from real assets of institutional investment portfolios across Europe, from Portugal to Denmark and from Scotland to Hungary. This data is being supplemented by location and economic data and the sustainability indicators chosen are building on previous research and using the Sustainability Reporting Guidelines of the Global Reporting Initiative GRI (Version 3) and the Construction and Real Estate Sector Supplement CRESS (Final Draft). The environmental aspects are measured in accordance with the Best Practice Recommendations on Sustainability BPR of the European Public Real Estate Association EPRA (Draft Version), referring to the common metrics identified by the Green Property Alliance GPA (Ground Rules for Property). The sustainability and financial data is being analysed using customised investment software and standard data mining tools such as SPSS Statistics in order to present first findings in a quest to establish whether or not, currently, there is indeed a ëGreen Alphaí.